In his poem The Rock, T.S. Eliot asks “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”. As we live in an ever-accelerating era of quickly shifting images and vast quantities of data, people might feel overwhelmed by the information around them and they would like to understand better what this information means. Because we live in a world inundated with more information than we can possibly process, it is very easy to get lost in the noise of over communicated environment being exposed to irrelevant messages bombarding us. Every single one of us needs to pose the questions: How are we dealing with the information? Is this information doing us any good? Is it relevant?

In order to have knowledge, first and foremost, we must have high-quality relevant data. Secondly, we must have meaningful information in context, logically organised and digested, in order to produce knowledge and insights. Wisdom is usually perceived as a proper use of knowledge and as John A. Morrison says ‘’Knowledge comes by taking things apart: analysis. But wisdom comes by putting things together’’. However, random information conglomerate/agglutination can block our wisdom. It is very easy to get lost in translation and getting overwhelmed by terabytes of information we can’t process. It is of utmost importance to filter unwanted information and get rid of data smog.

As PR practitioners, we constantly seem to be deluged with data from traditional press cuttings through to online news feeds and Twitter updates. The more we are exposed to, the harder it is to see what is important and what we need to react to. So today more than ever, we need meaningful insight and analysis. Maybe that way we can regain the lost wisdom that TS Elliot laments.