We generate data in many shapes and colors.
Letters, numbers, pictures, spectra, chromatograms, and whatnot…
When combined into a meaningful context (and hopefully along with its meta-data), these shapes and colors turn into Information. It could be telling the biochemistry of a patient's blood after receiving an exploratory Drug in a clinical trial and it could be the CMC information of the manufacturing process and product quality.
Take all the information around you and properly put it to work, and you reap the benefits of Knowledge. This is how we KNOW whether this new drug in development is safe and effective, this is how we KNOW how to make it, and this is how we KNOW where to look next.
When you reach the (elusive) top of the DIKW* Ladder, you are Wiser and develop a way to distinguish Right and Wrong, Safe and Dangerous, Ethical and non, Useful and Unuseful, and anything else we Humans have leveraged through our Intelligence.
* The DIKW Pyramid is a Knowledge management construct dating back to the 50’s by Kenneth Boulding and re-iterated by different scholars, each interpreting the levels slightly differently as the concept evolved. They say the original inspiration for this construct came from T. S. Eliot, in “Choruses from ‘The Rock’”:
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
In every step of the way (especially the hard ones) human kind is becoming Wiser- Technology can help us ameliorate disease and suffering along the way, but the true wisdom for guiding Human life, comes from within.
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