Coming to the point of superfluous information. It might be because of no opportunity costs, people often ‘waste’ information i.e., do not make the most efficient use of information. There is problem of overproduction of information and complete ‘market failure’in information exchange market.

Let me use an example to clarify this. Your doctor may have more information than you do, but this does not necessarily mean that he is more knowledgeable – leave alone wiser than you. Moreover, he may have more information about the disease, but you know much more about yourself, which means you are the expert on your personal illness. How wise you are about dealing with your problem depends upon you ! While it’s easy to acquire information, and even knowledge, wisdom is a different cup of tea !

Data
Data itself is not very useful. Think of it as the “Know-nothing” stage.
We must understand what the data is ( for example, your blood sugar levels) and how to acquire it, which is where the medical expertise is valuable.

Data to Information
Once we can apply this data to our disease, the data becomes information. This is the “Know-what” stage. This is when the doctor makes a diagnosis, for example, by pattern recognition – by matching your symptoms with those described in a text book.

Information to Knowledge
Next, the information must be converted into knowledge by finding patterns within the information. Thus, charting your blood sugar levels in relation to time , meals and exercise makes it knowledge. This is the “Know-how” stage and helps you to gain insights into your illness and how it affects you. The knowledge can be generic and can be applied to most patients with a particular disease.

Knowledge to Wisdom
Wisdom arises when the knowledge is transformed into insight or principles. Once you understand the source of the patterns of your personal illness, you can learn to manage your own illness, with your doctor’s help. This is the “Know-why” stage, and when you reach this stage, you become the true expert on your illness ! You can now share your wisdom with other patients – and your doctor, if he is wise enough to be willing to listen to you !

Search engines can help you sort and sift through the information, but you will need to make sense of it – and convert it to knowledge, and hopefully, even wisdom, for yourself ( with or without the help of a professional).

Atanu’s response: Dr, thanks for the mentioning the points. I stress the distinction between information and knowledge fairly vehemently because conflating the two leads to a lot of silly talk. The hierarchy I use is data, information, knowledge, and then understanding leading to wisdom and finally — at the very end — enlightenment. Here is a post from Jan 2004 on the distinction between information and knowledge.

as opposed to “useless/close-to-garbage” info from search engines like Google/AskJeeves/wikipedia etc.

People for some irrational reason place huge premium on Google, forgetting that a search engine is only as good as its content, and public content is fairly useless. I defy anybody to have anything significant to do with the US real estate without having to go thru MLS, or say getting the top 100 research papers on H5N1 without using uptodate.

Point being, useful monetizable info has already been signed, sealed & locked up for subscriber-only, carefully filtered access.

Superflous useless nonsense info is the one that overwhelms us thru search engines like google.

Ofcourse ocasionally a googler will stumble on info that is actually useful, like how to build an atom bomb or which stock is worth investing in, etc. But that is like your hero Sidharta stumbling upon nirvana. The random guy has as much chance at getting useful info as he has at getting nirvana.

I am highly skeptical of premises like “information wants to be free”, “info is public good” etc. Useful info is usually monetizable and monetizable info is private, sealed up. What is available out there for free is usually not worth a penny, and/or put up by some misguided philanthropist.

Bottomline – if I were to hire Atanu Dey to write quality articles on Indian Economy for the Economist at $1000 a pop, then deeshaa.org would be much more sophisticated, useful,searchable & subscriber-only access, than the present state of affairs
No offence, but communism simply doesn’t work, whether in the domain of information or politics.

Atanu’s response:

And about communism: communism does not work, and it is offensive. The reason it does not work is people do not understand that markets work and that incentives matter. And the reason people don’t understand economics is because economics uses everyday words that confuse the heck out of people.

Atanu’s Response:Vikram, these are carefully worked out figures using classical well-worn tools. The methods used are trade-secrets that I am not allowed to divulge.

So I guess I was able to sort through and identify the most relevant bit of information.

Thanks Atanu