Where is The Wisdom?

We live in an age of easy information. This is a most unusual situation. Historically, nearly everyone has been information poor. It took time for information to travel from one place to another; even between places that are relatively close to each other. Even 40 years ago, it was not common for news to be transmitted internationally. Indeed, in nearly all parts of the world, news and information was essentially local. In the early 90's, many companies were still using telexes for international communication - a decades old method of transmitting information. Locally typewriters (by this time electronic ones) and hand written memos were still being used. Fax had recently been introduced. In many subsidiaries of multinationals, fax machines were kept at the chief executive's office.

All this changed within a decade. The transformation has been astonishing. The simultaneous development of email and the web transformed the way businesses and individuals communicate. Information, which previously had been hard to find suddenly became easily accessible; to the extent that a new term - information overload - had to be coined. Earlier generations would have found this concept most intriguing. An entire generation has grown up with easy access to incredible amounts of information. Yet in all this deluge of information, we seem to have lost knowledge. More importantly, we seem to have lost wisdom - the ability to couple information with right and wrong.