Sipping from the firehose

My friend Jim continues an old tradition of printing small inspirational broadsides from handset lead type. The one on my bulletin board is from T.S. Eliot's The Rock, and reads:

"Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?"

Written in 1934, it could have been a challenge to today's media, particularly online media. Today we may swim in the plunge pool of a Niagara of information, but without a lot of effort, we don't "know" squat. For example, I've been talking about the origins of local placenames with Gregory Warner and we had a listener ask about Negro Creek. I can give you GPS coordinates for its location in Lewis County; I can point you toward the DOT survey of culvert locations on the creek; I can tell you that there are five Negro Brooks in New York, but only one Negro Creek. What I can't tell you is the story of how it got its name. And don't get me started on how hard it has been to find out who the candidates are in each of the NY Assembly and Senate races in the region. I can point you toward endless bloviation about the political landscape, but haven't been able to complete a simple list of the most basic of voter resources. For wisdom you are probably on your own, but adding to knowledge should be, at a bare minimum, somewhere in the media tool kit.