Quora once generated the following question:
"What is the difference between information, knowledge, data, and wisdom?"
The classic data-information-knowledge-wisdom pyramid is one of the most misleading simplifications in the knowledge management industry today.
Data-in-context turns into information, yes. But that's where the simplicity stops. (And even that is not simple: ask two business teams for their definition of "Customer" and see how far you get!)
Data and information are both primarily held in information stores, whether they are digitised in computer storage or filed in a filing cabinet - or as scattered papers across someone's desk (who's not following the company's "clean desk" policy)!
The jump occurs with knowledge. Knowledge is exclusively held in people's heads, and requires them to have assimilated the information from their "external brain" - computers, paperwork, books, etc. - and internalised it alongside all their previously-acquired information. Only then, with all this information colliding, is there a chance of knowledge forming.
And true insight - wisdom - is even harder. Think of all the people you've met in your life - including yourself! - who have never developed the clarity which all the information available should have provided them.
The "knowledge pyramid" is misleading and can lead to despair, since it suggests there is an easy progression where you just need to gather enough data to form information, then enough amassed information to build knowledge, and voilà! acquiring enough knowledge automatically begets wisdom.
Hopefully you are wise enough to know it doesn't necessarily work that way. ;-) ;-) :-D
- David Jaques-Watson, Quora response, 17 October 2022.