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 information
T.S. Eliot, from “The Rock” (1934)
Since those bleak pre-war days when Eliot put down these lines, our world has galloped on at even greater speed, with a velocity ever more dizzying. This of course is in great part aided by the advent of the computer and the information age. It has created such wealth and prosperity utterly unimagined a mere seventy years ago. But has all this made our lives better? Are we wiser and happier? We should be, if information = knowledge.