Information society development trends, from data through knowledge to wisdom

The paper investigates both the causes and effects of the rapid increase in the data volume (Big Data) and their impact on human cognition. The role of the Internet in distributing and exchanging of such data, and their impact on the growth of the Information Society are emphasized. As a result, Wisdom Science – a new kind of research – emerges which has the potential to facilitate more advanced solutions in the digital world. In consequence, new kinds of info-driven devices, services and systems called “smart” are developed and applied in almost every aspect of human activities around the world. However, this is not enough for humans to use all those well-informed smart devices and systems because, first of all, their decisions should be wise. Therefore, the paper, coming from a cognitive informatics approach defines wisdom and its applications, illustrated by some practical cases. Based on this, relations between knowledge and wisdom are shown, and human abilities corresponding to them are defined. They can decide about a transformation of a knowledge society to a wisdom society