The mind is a beautiful thing… like when out of the blue the DIKW picture flashes at 515am… and then the follow up for who, what, when, where and why… leads you to here.
Many authors think that the idea of the DIKW relationship originated from the opening of a very lengthy poem “Choruses”, by T. S. Eliot, that appeared in the pageant play The Rock, in 1934.
Chorus I opens with striking reflections on cyclical times, human knowledge, and spiritual loss, famously asking, “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?”
Knowledge, intelligence, and wisdom
I then found that in 1927, Clarence W. Barron addressed his employees at Dow Jones & Company on the hierarchy: “Knowledge, Intelligence and Wisdom”.
Data, information, knowledge
In 1955, English-American economist and educator Kenneth Boulding presented a variation on the hierarchy consisting of “signals, messages, information, and knowledge”. However, “the first author to distinguish among data, information, and knowledge and to also employ the term ‘knowledge management’ may have been American educator Nicholas L. Henry”, in a 1974 journal article.
And now we have escalation to Conspiracy Theory…
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