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?

-T. S. Eliot, The Rock

Recently, while enjoying our regular weekly trip to our favorite Chinese buffet, my lunch companion and I digressed into a debate regarding the nature of learning. My friend asked: “Understanding HOW we know something is all fine and well, but how do we understand information as knowledge or as wisdom, and what’s the difference between the two?”

While this question presents an interesting departure, the question is incomplete; it needs a few more terms to describe the various in-between places where information resides. The DIKW model (Data, Information, Knowledge, and Wisdom) represents a systems-thinking approach to information structure. Missing from this particular model is the information type “understanding.” Data is often thought of, in information science circles, as raw and unmediated information. Information itself is data made useful through the process of interrogation (why-is), endowing it with meaning. Knowledge is information that has been structured and placed into action for evaluating new information (why-how). Understanding is the appreciation of the “why-know” of the knowledge. Wisdom emerges as the ethic, moral, and value-laden use of knowledge and understanding for a greater good (why-do).

The DIKW model has been around for many years. Systems theorist Russell Ackoff stated in 1972, “Individual systems are purposive—knowledge and understanding of their aims can only be gained by taking into account the mechanisms of social, cultural, and psychological systems.” In his 1980 book, Architect or Bee?: The Human/Technology Relationship, Mike Cooley wrote about the DIKW information hierarchy while critiquing the systems approach to technological automation. During the Clinton and Bush administrations, the White House Communications Office utilized the DIKW model to bring a systems approach to the management of presidential communications.

I think the more important version of my friend’s question is the understanding of what constitutes information, and what is knowledge. If I ask my friend whether it is raining outside, he may respond either yes or no, based upon what he sees outside the windows. If we take a larger perspective however, we understand that it is raining somewhere in the world at any given moment. While some may view this as semantic trickery, it actually points to a larger issue of how we define “facts” Is a fact information or is it knowledge? If 2+2=4, is this information or is it knowledge? Is it even a fact?

To answer these questions, we must ask what role perspective plays in our understanding of the state of information. I was raised to understand the world as a series of binaries: dark or light, day or night, good or bad, rich or poor, well or ill, etc. I have since learned that these binary assumptions are illusions, as they each depend on perspective. How we process the data into information, contextualize it into knowledge, make meaning of it into understanding, and reflect upon it through the wisdom of our experiences determines how we, as individuals, interpret the world around us.

This process of moving forward through this hierarchy of meaning-making represents a systems approach to information. It also represents how human beings learn. As we paid the check, my friend broke open his fortune cookie and chuckled. “Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens.”