When I was at the University I met a young man who enjoys to play table tennis. He makes me a tt fan. We were playing during weekends all day long, and sometimes we finished exhausts.
One day, I inquired him why he was so fanatic with that sport. His answer left me thinking during a long time: "My father played, my grandfather played and his dad too. I think that is something there... In the blood. I never asked him. Matters? It is my genetic information. So I am."
What is information and what is knowledge? Are new technologies a vehicle for deep knowledge or only a sophisticated distraction? Are we entering to the knowledge era as all people suppose?
In this article we will revise some of these concepts and sure we will astonish you.
Introduction.
From the cavern's man the individual has wanted to be God.
All the significant progress of humanity is due to this fundamental and basic instinct. The different stages from the natural evolution of our civilisation are guided by the prime desire to understand the original intelligence of the creator.
Since always the nature appeared us like a strange, mysterious, powerful and singularly perfect thing, and men always believed that its discovery and understanding would lead them to the God's mind.
Therefore, the natural impulse to know the nature would approach every time to God, to know its secrets and maybe to be able to imitate it.
This course of action represents for me the history of science. Evolution of sciences, most of all that truly named "natural sciences", is the road to God’s mind.
Background
Development of science - and of course technology - make an impressive forward jump in 20th century.
Based on electricity development and the appearance of electronic technologies, communications permitted to share information across the globe almost instantly. The phone first, and radio & television equipment after, generated an impressive revolution in peer to peer communications and broadcasting industries.
Other developments, like basic sciences, chemistry, astronomy and physics, have made a revolution in the human knowledge around the universe, the man and nature phenomena.
Central Question
Futurologist predicts that we are entering in the Information Age or Knowledge Economy. It is true? We will see...
And I want to note that in their predictions it's implied a future of wealth ness and happiness brought to us.
The present abundance of information carried out by Internet and related media is a qualitative jump in humankind knowledge?
Assuming that a knowledge based economy would be fairest than a capital based or a natural resources based ones, are we near to reach a new kind of society, more dynamic and full of new opportunities?
Clarifier
Firstly we have to clearly define information and knowledge, two absolutely different concepts.
If we try Wikipedia the end result will be disappointing: appears to be hardly to clearly explain these two concepts. Try it.
The dictionary is fairer and provides you these definitions: Information is a collection of facts from which conclusions may be drawn. Knowledge is the psychological result of perception and learning and reasoning.
OK, if you eventually wish to rely in these terms, you are right. For me they are wrong. I will try a mostly eclectic set of definitions, more near a "common sense" ones.
Definitions
Data are a collection or selective group of facts related amongst them. Nature produce facts and a collection of them grouped by origin or results are called a datum. That is to say the minimal entity that conveys something new to us.
Facts are not information per-se, because only the existence of a human being and a consciousness mind could transform facts into data. Most times this consciousness gives relevant sense through the grouping process.
Please note that this is (surprisingly) consistent with the deep meaning of the Heisenberg principle of uncertainty. In Heisenberg's Universe, facts are modified by human watching. So important is this alteration that Heisenberg states that it is not possible to simultaneously know position and velocity of an atom. This fact produced an enormous impact in physics during 20th century.
Definition of Information
Information is a data group or a collection of facts from which conclusions may be drawn, dictionary says.
To rely in the ability of conclusions drawing for the definition mean that all incomplete data collection is not considered as information. This is not correct, because in the root of human nature is that information acquired is always partial.
Due to this cause I choose a far more ample definition: information is a collection of data grouped in a conceptualization unity. And you can inquire what a unity concept is? Its a concept that may be focused in the man's mind like an idea separated from others ideas.
If I declare that "my mother is cooking a soup", it could be determined many facts: I have a parent, my mom is cooking or cooks at least sometimes, is making that just now and there are a fact named soup that is expected that you understand about it. So, we have various facts grouped in a unity, yet saying only one event apparently.
Definition of Knowledge
Knowledge is information that allows to predict a nature's behavior, including human behavior.
You can obviously remark that this is a very abstract definition, or a fuzzy one. But it is a clear reflection of another natural fact, that is the person has an undoubtedly necessity of travel towards the purpose of God, the understanding of All.
Like Einstein and his theory of the time arrow, this concept state that all the cumulative knowledge in the universe moves in one direction. That is to say the direction of God, the architect and the end.
No makes a difference how "science-friendly" or "freezing" you are, science needs to essentially understand, and the understanding is a dimension of the evolution, the evolution of understanding. And knowledge is an "arrow" that moves towards the complete knowing of all.
This "intention driven" definition is helpful for me and my generic conceptions of universe and humankind.
What is going on?
After these "not very strict" but helpful definitions, we can face the main question of this article: we are moving to a knowledge-based society or the current technological revolution it's only a massive information fever without crucial sense?
I definitely understand that the suitable solution is already clearly obvious. Communications and pcs are revolutionizing our ordinary lives. Internet is a big step in this transformation. What we find in Internet? Information. That is clear, information is all around us. We are bombing by a massive quantity of facts grouped by different criteria.
But a knowledge based economy means more than that. Experts predict a world where people, corporations and countries base their economies in knowledge generation or in its distribution, recycling or marketing. And this is an improbable future.
We observe new and dynamic companies effectively making benefits with different type of information, businesses that never we have seen before. People are making cash with exceptional uses of well known and/or ancient information. Others have their businesses related with reprocessing information generated by others.
There are companies that are making money providing people the possibilities of interchange information. Sometimes this information is valuable and sometimes is only individual information, with no worth except for their selves.
There are, too, people who is researching in all information with an original insight, only because has the raw data accessible. Before Internet, to compile information was a tired work, moving from one library to the other.
It's true that the current availability of information effectively make possible to relate and cross relate it and, perhaps, bringing to the light some new information or yet new knowledge on the basis of old data.
Please note that I said "or", and this is a great advantage of our definition of profound knowledge. There are a lot of cases in which only the clever analysis of well known information undoubtedly develops new knowledge, understanding it as information that allows to predict behavior of nature.
Here I recognize Einstein's work again. He only needed to review old movement laws with a pair of good and pure eyes to uncover completely news physic laws and to refund the universe concept. He predicted facts that only we can observe decades after his death and successfully accomplished that only thinking and linking old concepts in a new and creative way.
As stated in the previous paragraphs, there are a lot of uses of information in a commercial environment. But it is obvious that this fact is far away from knowledge, and hence far away from knowledge based economy. What we have in internet and in the related technologies are information, raw data more or less crude and in a lesser extend, some new information derived from data mining and other techniques.
Conclusion
It is evident that the democratic dissemination of information generated by new technologies is a revolution itself. Today we live in an interconnected world where data and information are spread across the world in a high speed runaway. People are exchanging information instantly but this information is generated by people in an old fashion way, with exactly the same effort that moved the scientist in the past.
Only after a new revolutionary and equally opportunities driven context, we will eventually achieve a social status that permit to share knowledge in a commercial context. Its indispensable a new kind of entrepreneur and a new environment that no longer will emerge now, in a planet guided by regional safety wars, lot of population starving and two-side fundamentalism.
We are loosing the opportunity of the future. We are swimming in a sea of information, sometimes generating new concepts and insights and spreading faster and faster. The world is looking for commercial expressions of the knowledge sea and newborn dynamic companies are growing fast. But we are far away from a knowledge based economy. The challenge is think how it can be done. And this is the topic of the next article.
