Knowledge today is confused with information. We have mountains of information and scarcely any knowledge. What we desperately need is knowledge.
The printing press and the internet allow us to store what we have learned and pass information down to future generations easily. Information has built the world as it is today. Information allows us to create things in form (information). Information allows us to build things: roads, bridges, buildings, cars, computers. It gives us know-how: knowing how to build or create something (in form.)
Much information comes from science. There is no certainty in science, only (probable) theories. These can be argued about, and they can be disproved, and in time many of them are disproved. The history of science, after all, is the story of us learning new things that eventually make previous humans and theories look dumb. (Yet we foolishly cling to our current theories like preachers clinging to the Bible. I know – the irony!)
A different aspect of information is the information that comes from reporting, say news, or from the internet more generally, or from a friend(-of-a-friend), or your brother-in-law's ex-wife's hairdresser's sister: from people reporting what they saw or think or heard, or sharing what they (think they) know. This too can be argued about, rejected, disputed and disproved.
Knowledge is different, and is primary. Knowledge comes from experience. If you’ve touched a flame, you know what it feels like. You will not do it again voluntarily. This type of learning is utterly different to learning information. If someone tries to debate with you the fact that flames hurt, that flames burn, you will not (ultimately) get pulled into a debate with them. There is no discussion to be had, no argument, no theory, no second-hand reporting of events, no dispute, no proving or disproving.
Nor is it a matter of opinion. Perhaps for a while you may engage in conversation with someone who contradicts you. But after a while you will stop. Because there is no point arguing about something that you have knowledge of. You don’t argue about things you know. You only argue about information and its children: your opinions, your interpretations, and your points of view. Knowledge, unlike information, is incontrovertible.
The glut of information we’ve collected over the past 500 years has made our lives much more convenient and has brought many blessings, but it’s not necessarily made our lives better. All this information, after all, has led to ‘The Age of Anxiety.’ Look at this chart below from Google showing the frequency of words in our literary output. Look what has happened since our information (and pseudo-information) has exploded in size, along with countless contradictory pieces of information and points of view, since the introduction of computers in (say) the 80s and 90s.
The next question then is: what exactly does that mean? When I talk about balancing information with knowledge, the knowledge that flames hurt probably won’t help us much! So what knowledge do we need? This needs some more discussion.
[I’d love to say I’ll write about that next time, but I don’t really have a plan here. It’s a huge achievement for me right now just to publish something, anything. Doing things in a carefully planned, orderly fashion is too much to ask right now. And then of course… no-one reads this. But if people start reading my stuff, and engaging with it, perhaps I’ll get my *h!t together in the future. Oh, I’m trying not to swear too. It doesn’t come easily.]
Cheers!