I had cause today to remember the September of 37 years ago. It
marked the end of my year studying Computer Science at the then Hatfield
Polytechnic, now the University of Hertfordshire. I came across the bound copy
of my dissertation, in another one of those clear-outs of which I find myself
engaged in at spare moments these days.
This master’s thesis of mine discussed data modelling. My
eyes lit upon a passage which highlighted distinctions among data, information
and knowledge .
I asked myself today – I guess I could have gone the distance and
included wisdom? Data - Information-Knowledge-Wisdom. That’s the journey.
Was I not influenced by these lines from T.S. Eliot’s ‘Choruses
from the Rock’?
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?
And why did I not make that final step? Or even at the time
recall the poetry?
I guess an explanation lies in the intense nature of that academic year. I was entirely immersed in a field that valued technical accuracy over any kind of philosophical reflection – though for sure I was meeting folk with minds which could do both, and more!
Success for me meant defining systems that
were functional, bounded, and demonstrably competent. Wisdom—with its fluidity
and resistance to rigid schemas—simply did not fit into those data types and engineering equations I was encountering.
In the decades before and since those days at Hatfield, I have
regularly revisited T.S. Eliot’s poetry. I guess the master's degree taught me to
focus on how to assemble information,
but the years before and since have been a slow, necessary journey towards trying to understand what is worth keeping.