(Pause, wait for it\u2026)<\/p>\n
This is true for content and learning as well. (Not a great punch line was it?)<\/p>\n
Today, George would have pulled out his smartphone, pressed a few keys and answered:<\/p>\n \u201cBette Davis in Beyond the Forest<\/a>. Released in 1949, the film tells the story of Rosa Moline, a neglected wife of a small-town Wisconsin doctor. She grows bored and becomes infatuated with a visiting Chicago businessman. She extorts money from her husband’s patients and uses the cash to flee to Chicago, but the businessman does not welcome her. She returns home and becomes pregnant by her husband. The businessman has a change of heart and follows her to Wisconsin. He wants her back, but not her baby, so she attempts to abort by throwing herself down a hill and gets peritonitis, dying in what Bette Davis called \u2018the longest death scene ever seen on the screen.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Admittedly, such a complete response may have upset Martha nonetheless \u2013 another example of comic timing gone wrong.<\/p>\n The (DIKW) Hierarchy<\/a> represents the relationship between Data, Information, Knowledge, and Wisdom or Intelligence. Timing is one ingredient in the move from one level to another \u2013 the association between the need and the data. Something may be data at one moment (the name of the movie) and information another (answering the question).<\/p>\n We are no longer left to our own knowledge to answer the questions we face. We no longer need to memorize the side effects of drugs, the timing of a 1964 Corvette engine, or how to add a sound to the roll over of a button when programming a website. In fact, we no longer need to \u201clearn\u201d these details at all \u2013 we can look them up as needed.<\/p>\n Context<\/em> is another ingredient in the move from Data to Wisdom on the DIKW Hierarchy. For example, data (32) in context (32 degrees Fahrenheit) is information. Information in context (freezing point of water is 32 degrees) is knowledge.<\/p>\n Before so much content, data, and information were available at your fingertips (from \u201cofficial\u201d and user generated<\/a> sources), you were expected to become knowledgeable (and intelligent) by learning and remembering \u2013 at schools, workshops, seminars, continuing educations, etc.<\/p>\n Today, is there still a need for formal education at all, much less for the content coming from events? Maybe we no longer need to waste formative years and hours at conferences learning if everything will be available to us when we need it. Why should I attend a session to hear what I can get when and where I want it?<\/p>\n Given the continued importance of \u201ccontent\u201d at events (over 95% saying \u201cvery\u201d or \u201cits the reason they come\u201d in the short survey done for the Event Marketer Summit<\/a>) how does this change the content mix and alignment at your program? How do you ensure that your program\u2019s content is more than a modern game of trivial pursuit?<\/p>\n One downside of \u201cavailable at your fingertips\u201d knowledge is the threat of becoming researchers<\/em> instead of scholars<\/em>. Simply getting the information at the time and in the context needed does not mean comprehension, understanding, or seeing the connections to other knowledge. Building this intelligence<\/em> seems an important place to focus for both formal and program based content. [Knowledge and Intelligence are indeed different \u2013 see here<\/a>]<\/p>\n T.S. Eliot wrote:<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cWhere is the Life we have lost in living? In an article in the New York Times Sunday Review<\/em>, Andrew Hacker<\/a> \u2013 seemingly from the edges of conventional wisdom \u2013 proposes one approach when he asks \u201cIs Algebra Necessary<\/a>?\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.janusdialogs.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/virginia-wolfe.jpg?resize=300%2C190\" "\\"virginia")
<\/a>For the first several minutes of the movie \u201cWho\u2019s Afraid of Virginia Woolf<\/a>\u201d Martha (Elizabeth Taylor) pesters George (Richard Burton) with the question \u201c\u2019What a dump!\u2019 Who says that?\u201d<\/em> Lacking the answer, they go back and forth building tension and anger. George lacked the information to answer the question, and the means to get to it instantly.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.janusdialogs.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/iStock_000018961541Small.jpg?resize=300%2C199\" "\\"iStock_000018961541Small\\"")
<\/a>Information at our fingertips certainly changes much, and settles many discussions, but one of its greatest impacts is allowing the alignment of information and need. It greatly increases the value and reach of shared knowledge<\/a> and collective intelligence<\/a>, and reduces the need to be knowledgeable, or even informed, in advance of the need.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.janusdialogs.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/curiosity__02.jpg?resize=300%2C187\" "\\"curiosity__02\\"")
<\/a>Few would ever have needed to know how to calculate the time on Mars, or considered it part of their formal education. Yet now there is an app for that<\/a> and with the Curiosity Mission<\/a> (@MarsCuriosity<\/a>), more contexts for this knowledge then ever.<\/p>\n
\nWhere is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
\nWhere is the knowledge we have lost in information?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.janusdialogs.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/iStock_000000342932XSmall.jpg?resize=300%2C199\" "\\"iStock_000000342932XSmall\\"")
<\/a><\/em>\u201c<\/em>A TYPICAL American school day finds some six million high school students and two million college freshmen struggling with algebra. In both high school and college, all too many students are expected to fail. Why do we subject American students to this ordeal? I\u2019ve found myself moving toward the strong view that we shouldn\u2019t.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n