Wisdom through Data - an alternative view on the DIKW Hierarchy

Those who know me have heard me say this a lot recently. And as many people wonder I do not have found a new obsession in Knowledge Management, I am firmly committed to Data Management and all subjects surrounding it. But when think about it the DIKW Pyramid is a charming construct, which has a lot to offer to us Data nerds, unfortunately it has suffered a little bit from our obsession with the new and the human need to associate abstract concepts with known shapes to make sense of them. I will expand later on this.

DIKW Hierarchy

The DIKW concept was first (at least to my knowledge – pun intended) mentioned by TS Elliot in three lines of his poem 'The Rock':

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 the information?

Much later Russel L. Ackoff derived his DIKW Hierarchy and it caught on pretty quickly, as it was a logical extension on what was and still is deemed to be basic computer science. It builds on a concept that data, defined as a sequence of one or more symbols, gets enriched to become information. Information defined as processed, organized and structured data, when quickly available if needed becomes knowledge. And finally, knowledge when it′s principles and laws are thoroughly understood ?becomes wisdom. Intuitively this can be understood by most.

DIKW Hierarchy as understood by me

So to support my way of looking at the DIKW Hierarchy here is a symbolic representation of it:

To be honest I do not disagree with the conclusion that DIKW is a hierarchical model, but in contrast to the mainstream interpretation I believe that the DIKW Pyramid is a upside down step-pyramid. With each level the value of the model increases.

Data

Data is nothing more than symbols without inherit value, nothing more than noise we cannot productively use. When we apply structures and symbolism to this Data we turn the noise into Information that is having some value to us as we can interpret it.

Information

When we apply one or more hypothesis to the Information and when we can subject it to a system we have turned information into Knowledge.

Knowledge

Knowledge is a valuable commodity as we can apply it to a decision making process which at least in theory should add value to it as a process and lead to better decisions. However, the insight is solely based on past observations and may not apply 100% to the future as well.

When we apply a thorough understanding and a full integration onto the equation as get as the final output Wisdom.

Wisdom

Ackoff describes wisdom as the ‘appreciation of the “why”’ which is indeed a very elegant way to describe that we have a thorough understanding of and what has led to the extrapolated Wisdom – we are in fact prescribing a course of action - a decision in certain terms.

As always please feel free to ask, suggest and challenge my views. Hope this provides a little more differentiated view on longs since known topics. ?