Data, Information, Knowledge, and Wisdom: Toward a Recalibration of Human–Technology Relations

This article is a (mildly) edited version of a lecture held at the SJTU-IAMCR Emerging Media Forum in Shanghai, China, on April 18, 2025. The lecture is a reflection on the increased sociocultural dominance of data, at the expense of the importance of knowledge and wisdom in particular. The notion of data fetishism—with a reconciliation of Marxist and Freudian traditions—is mobilized to organize a critical reflection about this cultural reconfiguration, and to develop a series of counter-strategies, focusing on the importance of media and information literacy, without ignoring the role of informal learning and knowledge-sharing (as is illustrated by a brief case study of the first interactive film—the Kinoautomat ). The lecture ends with a reflection about the role of the university in moving beyond data fetishism, and in stimulating knowledge and wisdom, contextualized by the makeability of technology.