Disclaimer The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in anyway.
We throw around terms like "information worker" and "knowledge worker" all of the time. So a common question I get is "What's the difference between information and knowledge? They're the same thing, right?"
That's a big, fat no. I had the pleasure of having dinner with Larry Prusak, Jonathan Spira, and Dan Rasmus last night -- three heavyweights in the world of knowledge management. Along with several customers and Microsoft folks, we discussed that very question at great lengths.
My conclusion: Knowledge = information + experience.
As an example: If you described a certain person to me, you could tell me their name, how tall they were, what they look like, etc. I have information. When I meet the person, I can experience them, and talk to them, and smell them, and understand what makes them tick. I have knowledge.
Another example (from last night's dinner): Getting and passing along information is much easier now than it was 400 years ago. But is learning a language any easier? Not really. There's more information available, but the learning process isn't any easier. Holding a book on Spanish is having information. Speaking fluently is having knowledge.
One more example: A recipe for making a cheesecake is information. Being able to apply that information and turn it into a nice dessert? That's knowledge.
I have one more example around sex, but I'll leave that one off the blog...