Computer Data Recovery

With the turn of century, the world is witnessing a ‘shift of paradigm’ from information society to knowledge society. Data, information and knowledge have become the pillars of development and progress of the society. Computer technology has been instrumental in processing of data and information and creation of knowledge in the making of 21st century. Business, intelligence and technology have received the fillip with advanced information systems and intelligent knowledge. The new channels of knowledge sharing have given rise to human and information networks. 

The advanced computers today are even capable of making human intervention. These machines are designed to accept data as input, process data and generate decisions and actions accordingly. If a human brain performs the same task, we consider his/her intelligence, knowledge and expertise as the key. For some people computers are devices, which have been designed to process knowledge.

  
The history of computers reveals that these machines were earlier used for processing business data processing and computers were merely data processing machines. The raw data collected from surveys were used to process reports and after analyses by management it was used to make management decision. The hourly time sheets were used to process payroll checks and reports for the employee costs.

In the later years, computers were used to process data to generate information. With new developments, payroll data was added with other sales data, cost data and produced information about the products that lucrative. For cases of huge data, it can be processed into reports to facilitate high-level management decisions.

In order to understand the intricacies of computing enigma, it is essential to understand the concepts of knowledge, information and data.  

Data

Essentially data is considered as unprocessed and unorganized facts. More so, it may represent a discreet set of events. It may be in the form of fact or figure collected from surveys and events. These can be used to make calculation or drawings and concluding information such as images, text, numbers and sound. It can be stored in a form that is compatible for being stored in the computer. Further, the data is static by nature. In order to gather necessary information an organization has to decide on the nature and volume of data.

Information

Typically, information represents organized data. It is a definite knowledge acquired or supplied to someone or something retrieved from collected data or facts. For instance, a telephone service provides information about the various telephone numbers on public request. In computer technology, information communicates the facts and data that have been used in a systematic way.     

Knowledge

Essentially, it is information on the accumulated data (processed data) that makes the decision-making easier. Knowledge is the information that has a meaning and serves a purpose. It involves human understanding of subject matter, which has been acquired through proper study and experience. Usually, effective thinking, learning and proper understanding of a given subject help to develop knowledge. Knowledge is derived from information in a similar way as information is generated from data. However, it is important to consider that knowledge is not information and information is not data. Knowledge is acquired through study or pragmatic experience of a related subject.

Sometimes, awareness or general possession and of facts, information, ideas, truths or principals is associated with knowledge. It is necessary to understand the information in order to conceive the relevance or importance of a complicated area.   

One of the emerging issues in the current day context is Knowledge Management. It deals with serious issues of competence, survival and organizational adaptation relative to the environment of increasing discontinuous change. It incorporates organizational processes that require synergistic amalgamation of data and information processing potential of information technology. The innovative and creative potential of the human beings also forms a part of Knowledge Management.        

Comparison between Knowledge and Information

The major difference between knowledge and information is that the former is possessed by a person whereas the later is exchanged. It is obvious that knowledge is subjective and information is objective. Suppose we consider two entities X and Y. Then they follow this process. First X codes the knowledge into information and then Y update/create the knowledge by decoding the information. The information is now stored with Y as Knowledge. However, the process of coding and decoding is quite complicated. It might lead to several possibilities as well as problems.          

Information comprises of data, however, it is important to understand that not all the data comprise information. Not all information constitutes knowledge. However, knowledge is a smaller part of wisdom and it is a part of data as well.       

For instance, it is a known fact that computers are used for storage, input, processing and output of data. However, most of the experts disagree with the fact that computer can have knowledge or be wise.