Knowledge Management (Data, Information and Knowledge), Reply back to Prof. Mark Woodman comments.

This is a reply to the comments given by Professor Mark Woodman on my blog Knowledge management (Data, Information and Knowledge).

So far replying back to the comments has become very interesting, and in this blog I am really surprised to see the comments, as the comments size seems to me bigger then my actual topic on this blog which is quite interesting.
Here I m confused in making my mind how shall I move forward. I have two options either to justify my position first about the examples I have given in my blog or to give an explanation to the comments.
I would like to justify myself first in the context of comments given by Mr. Mark and then I will come up to my conclusion.

I start with my very first example which is “35”, “Television”, “Colour”
In this example I said these three words individually represent data and according to Data definition which I have described in my blog “It is just symbols which don’t make any sense or meanings itself”. Here according to this definition I didn’t mean that these words have no meanings at all as there hardly be anything in an organisation which has no meaning to someone or anyone because if something do not have a meaning then what would be a purpose to having that specific thing in an organisation. “35” could be anything, similarly everyone know what is the purpose of television but when someone talk about the it on an organisation level then it can be used in many terminologies like as, if you want to watch a football match you can go to the cafeteria or I am going on a video conference so television can also be used for video conferencing and television may also be used as a decoration piece in some corner of in an office.
I agree with Prof. Mark that they have meaning in mathematical terms and they exist in dictionary and it is wrong to say that they do not have any meaning at all.
My point is for a real life person yes they do have meanings but on an organisational level we don’t know in which perspective or in which terms these words going to be used unless some information is not attached with them.
Now I move myself a step forward to Information, according to Prof. Mark if I have a 35 inch television at my home, is information for Mr. Mark. Yes that’s true it’s information for Mr. Mark but I used this in terms of describing the full example as I said in my example this 35 inch television size is enough for our sitting room size which is 12 by 10 or whatever.
According to our last discussion we are agreed that it’s difficult to prove our point of view with the respect of generic examples from real life so it would be better if we stick to the examples from our organisation.

According to Prof. Mark “You wrote, "Knowledge is to understand the information and make our decision or judgement on the basis of information.". If the word "information" did not appear in the definition I'd be much happier.”

Sir don’t you think there are cases when people conclude something from the information provided on the basis of their knowledge. For example in Pakistan recently general elections took place and before the elections the stock market was down because investors wasn’t feeling comfortable with the existing political party who was in rule and as soon as results announced and the situation started getting clear about the opposition parties that they are coming in power now, the investors started investing again and now with in days stock market has done a record business in Pakistan history.
The reason why I have given this example is people knew the previous party who was in rule for last eight years wasn’t good enough and it wasn’t secure to invest money into the stock market and it was also a military rule in Pakistan (though this is a true fact about Pakistan that investment always come into Pakistan whenever there is a military rule rather then democracy and it’s the world power America who claims to bring democracy all over the world but they are one of the biggest supporters of military rule in Pakistan which is quite strange). So how did they decide not to invest though military ruling time is considered much secure in Pakistan, because of their knowledge as America is stepping back to support him.
Over all, my view about knowledge is, we can not make our decisions from the information provided all of the time with out the help of knowledge we do have.

According to Prof. Mark “You conclude by saying, "Over all data, information and knowledge are interchangeable. Data may be knowledge for someone and vice versa". (From what you write earlier about data/information/knowledge, I did not expect this conclusion, so you need to explain your position better.)”

Here I would like to give an example from my organisation. I work as a receptionist in my hotel and we keep a copy of a guest bill at reception and we call that copy a Reg Card. Reg card contains the guest information that when a guest checked in and when he/she will be checked out and all the payment details etc. In a case if some of the guest claims that he/she has prepaid his/her breakfast but that guest name is not on a breakfast list which is given to the restaurant department staff they come to the reception and ask us to confirm if that guest has pre paid or not.
We dig up that guest’s Reg Card and confirm the restaurant staff about pre payment.
If we give that Reg Card to the restaurant staff they won’t be able to understand how to confirm if the guest already has paid for his/her breakfast.
For us (Receptionist) that Reg Card is information but the same Reg Card is just data for Restaurant staff, similarly the breakfast report which is only relevant to the restaurant staff is just data for us (Receptionist) while that list is information for restaurant staff. So Data, Information and Knowledge are interchangeable.