Information, Knowledge, and Wisdom

“Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? / Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” So wrote T. S. Eliot. Technology puts in our hands a tremendous source of information. Google, for example, has obsoleted the pedantic memorization of facts. But that very technology we call a boon threatens to erode our knowledge in a flood of information, endangering the wisdom that arises from knowledge. Information, while a valuable tool, must not supplant introspection, synthesis, and learning; it should rather enhance them. Technology must not corrode intellectual development but empower it.

Inspiration drawn from “Focus and Priorities” by Dallin H. Oaks and “Five Things We Need to Know About Technological Change” by Neil Postman, both of which cite this idea from T. S. Eliot.