YuBlog

Data, Information, Knowledge, and Wisdom

// December 9th, 2006 // Technology

Dr. Liu posted an interesting discussion about the relationships between data, information, and knowledge. In fact, there is another word, wisdom, which is always compared with them together. Simply put, data can be considered as the phenomenon of our physical world, information is the nature of the world, knowledge is the mapping of the world in our mind, and wisdom is our power to further understand and change the world. We have databases to manage data, information systems to organize information, and recently knowledge management systems are proposed to help people achieve knowledge.

But can we build something to unleash the power of thinking? We spend much time to build tools to reserve and retrieve information. We are more and more dependent on calculators, notepads, and Googles, meanwhile, we are losing our ability to compute, to memorize, and to think. Can you still calculate 124 X 237 in your mind? Can you still quickly remember a telephone number? Can you still believe in your own answer without the search engines? The wisdom, the creativity, the freedom of thinking, are the essential virtue of human. Please do not leave them away.