Data, information, knowledge and wisdom

Bellinger, Castro and Mills defines the words data, information, knowledge and wisdom. The way I understand it data is the ground level and does not make sense all alone. This is what information is 'made' of. Further knowledge comes out of information. When you can understand the knowledge and use it in other context it is becoming wisdom. To get wisdom you first of all need raw material. This raw material is what Bellinger, Castro and Mills call symbols (2004). When the symbols are connected together in different ways so it gives a meaning it becomes information. The next step is knowledge and this is beneficial information. However this does not mean that you have to understand the information. This can be something you just memorize but do not really catch. When you work with the knowledge, reflect and try to understand it you are working towards wisdom. You put different knowledge you have together and analyse it. This is being in the learning zone trying to understand the information. Wisdom is when you understand the knowledge you have. When you can use the knowledge in other settings it is wisdom. According to Bellinger, Castro and Mills (2004) wisdom is something only people can have and it goes deeper then understanding, and to have/get wisdom you need a soul.

So as a human being I know I can have something a computer or a book does not have. I can have wisdom. The way I see it I need a brain to think, reflect and analyse my knowledge. But I also know I can use for example computers (Internet) to get this knowledge and learn. I can use this tool to get data, information and knowledge. Out of this I can go deeper in to what I read and hopefully this will become wisdom. The wisdom needs to be built up of something. It can not just be there without the raw material, and we have to get this raw material from somewhere. In today's society Internet is an easy access to this data we need to get to our wisdom.

What we see here is that information is data but data is not necessarily information. Knowledge is information but information does not have to be knowledge. And it is the same with wisdom. Wisdom is data, information and knowledge (and what goes deeper then that) but data, information and knowledge does not have to be wisdom.