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Technology
Dear Darwin, there was this small issue you missed - Converting 'data' into 'wisdom' is the biggest evolution in mankind's history
(column by Frederick Zarndt, Executive Controller,
Planman North America Operations)
O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying! The endless cycle of idea and action, Endless invention, endless experiment, Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness; Knowledge of speech, but not of silence; Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word. All our knowledge brings us nearer to death, But nearness to death no nearer to God. Where is the life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
Excerpt from "The Rock" by T.S. Eliot (1934)
In a recent column, I described how computer processing power and storage technology capacities are presently increasing at astonishing rates and how information production is escalating at a similar pace. In a very condensed fashion, I now want to examine data, information, knowledge and wisdom and how each might help one become a genuine human being.
Both, Information Science and Knowledge Management, have separately focussed on the Data, Information, Knowledge and Wisdom Hierarchy (DIKW) known to each discipline as the Information Pyramid and the Knowledge Pyramid respectively (Interestingly the first mention of the DIKW hierarchy is credited not to an information scientist but to the poet T.S. Eliot).
According to Wikipedia, Data, Information, Knowledge and Wisdom are defined as mentioned below:
- Data comes in the form of raw observations.
- Information is created by analysing relationships and connections between the various data.
- Knowledge is created by using information for action.
- Wisdom is knowing why & when to apply knowledge.
As implied by the above definition, data are numbers, measurements, words, statements, images and other similar items. Data may be true or false and accurate or misleading. Data only becomes interesting when, through analysis, it is transformed into information. What is information?
A good dictionary will trace the word back to the Latin verb informar, which means "to give form to." Some reflection is required to see the similarity between its etymology and defining information as "that which reduces uncertainty" as did the late Claude Shannon, whose work "A Mathematical Theory of Communication" provides the foundation for information theory, as well as, a quantitative measure of information.
And only if you know that Shannon talked about information in terms of messages transmitted through a channel perhaps a noisy one such as a telephone line to receiver does the Wikipedia concept of informations analysed data harmonise ith Shannon's notion of information as hat which reduces uncertainty.
Both information and data are measured n terms of binary digits or bits. A ingle bit can be either on or off, true or false, positive or negative (You see how convenient this is for electrical and magnetic computing devices). A single bit can represent the state of Schrödinger's famous cat the bit is 1, if the cat is alive or 0 if dead or 8 bits can represent the letter S as 01010011.
By established but arbitrary convention, a byte usually comprises 8 bits (23 bits), a kilobyte 103 bytes or 210 bits, a megabyte 106 bytes or 220 bits and so on so forth. In 2002, the world created 5 exabytes (5x1018 bytes) of new information stored on media such as hard disks, DVDs and paper.
If this storage were instead used to represent a number Schrödinger's pets, it would be possible to reduce uncertainty about the health of 40,000,000,000,000,0 00,000 cats many more than have ever existed on this planet!
Obviously, I'm not suggesting that 5 EB of information about cats is a worthy goal, but while remembering that the easily searchable internet (static web pages) comprised only 167 TB or 0.0000334 of the 5 EB in 2002, what uncertainties might one reduce by searching the internet?
What questions can be answered with this information? Using Google, Yahoo! or some other search engine, one can ask questions like who, what, when and where and reasonably expect that the engine will deliver an answer. That these answers are frequently ambiguous is another matter.
As an example of this ambiguity, suppose I want to know something about James Jeans, one of Schrodinger's colleagues and contemporaries. Searching with Google or Yahoo! Yields considerable hits, most of which are about James Jeans jeans and though many fewer in number, also about James Jeans the physicist and astronomer.
It's easy to tell the later hits from the former, but this act of discrimination does illustrate the fact that search engines deliver information; however, a human is required to make sense of the information or to derive knowledge from it. Again drawing on Wikipedia, we find that "knowledge consists of information augmented by intentionality," or according to Dr.Russell Ackoff, Professor Emeritus of the Wharton School, the "application of data and information."
No computer - a device which processes data and information according to a set of instructions or program is yet capable of independently and autonomously augmenting information with intent. In short, at present, human beings are required to create and apply knowledge, and although they may be invaluable in the manipulation and delivery of data, information and knowledge, computers are of no help at all vis-a-vis the creation of knowledge.
Which brings us to the pinnacle of the DIKW pyramid: Wisdom. Anyone with unfettered access to the internet can search for instructions on how to build several varieties of weapons of mass destruction, some of which will be knowledge first acquired by scientists working on the Manhattan project.
However, as a wise person once told me, "throughout history, knowledge has always exceeded the wisdom with which it has been applied," and I surmise that many of these same scientists would now be inclined to agree.
Whether one believes that wisdom derives from reason, experience, intuition or spirituality, it is uniquely a characteristic of a genuine human being. Computers, search engines and 5 EB of new information each year may help human beings to not make a seemingly wise, but ultimately foolish, decision from incomplete information such as the Manhattan scientists had.
And although I'm sure that Sri Yukteswar would shudder if he heard me quote him in this context, computers may at best help to reduce ignorance which "is not only a trouble in itself, but is also the source of all the other troubles of man."
(End of Frederick Zarndt column)
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