The bookmarks problem - turning data into information
Just like most of us are, I also am an owner of an enormous pile of bookmarks saved to “check out later”. I sometimes really do check them out later (way much later), but still I mostly don’t remember the content afterwards. For a long time I thought that by collecting bookmarks I was collecting information, as in knowledge, but I started realizing a while ago I was just collecting data, mostly useless data, not useless because it doesn’t have a function, but useless because I fail to use it.
What is the difference between data and information?
Information is something you know, something you can use for further thinking or doing, something you can verbally explain to other people. Data is just a bare potential of information, data is the thing that requires further work on it to become information, data is an information waiting to be known. Information is therefore a processed data.
“Data becomes information when it is stored in a given formation. That is, the numbers and the letters, the words don’t mean anything until they are organized into a system”. (Steven Sketches)
This definition kinda makes it sound like the solution for turning data into information is organizing my bookmarks by making folders defined by topics (like a folder for wiki, a folder for articles, a folder for music etc.), but that is not the solution. Putting data in a box that fits it is not enough, rearranging the books on the bookshelf is not reading. So how do I turn this data into information, how do I become better at remembering the stuff I bookmarked? For me the only solution I’ve found so far is writing it down. Summarizing, describing in actual words what I’ve just read, this works for me. Writing about what I’ve read not only makes me remember it better, but also makes me understand it better, I mean these two are definitely tightly connected, because when I really understand something I don’t just forget it. I may forget the details but that thing that I understood about it stays with me, it gets to be integrated into my memory forever. Also, summarizing the content of my bookmarks turned out to be a great way to filter the shitty and totally unimportant stuff, you know that stuff that at first seems very interesting and you think you wanna go back to it later but as you start writing about it you simply realize its totally not worth it, so that's another plus for writing - it gives you a better perspective on what matters.
Thanks for reading!