The information pyramid: an introduction

Abstract

The DIKW (data, information, knowledge, wisdom) pyramid (or hierarchy) is a very popular conceptual and graphic scheme in the field of information sciences and knowledge management, which can be very useful for analyzing and disambiguating the concept of information and to compare theories related to this topic. The article illustrates the origins of the DIKW pyramid, its structure, its variants and the main criticisms that have been addressed to it. The main interpretations and criticalities of each of the four ‘layers’ of the pyramid are also presented. While relatively to data and information it is possible to identify reasonably sensible and widespread definitions (data as discontinuities in the reality; information as data enriched with meaning thanks to contextualization and interpretation), the interpretations of the concepts of knowledge and wisdom are more divergent and, with regard to wisdom, none of them appears sufficiently plausible and integrable with the other layers of the pyramid.