WE ARE AN information society.  Modern technology has produced this phenomenon.  On TV we can watch Infomercials.  Even in the regular network programming, advertising information dominates a significant percentage of air time, even on so-called news networks.  The Internet, of course, has expanded the Information Age exponentially. 
But of what benefit is information without understanding?  I want to attempt to distinguish INFORMATION from KNOWLEDGE.
INFORMATION is nothing more than untethered facts; KNOWLEDGE is what can be gained by pulling the facts together into a unified whole called comprehension. 
INFORMATION is raw data; KNOWLEDGE is recognizing the relationship between that data and other facts and ideas, comprehending the implications of those relationships.
A person armed only with information is a mere carpenter; progress to knowledge and you might have an architect.
Information is a list; knowledge is a book.
Gertrude Stein once wrote:  "Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense."  Perhaps this is what we refer to these days as the "dumbing down" of our society.  How often do we hear people attempting to impart information who are unable to converse in complete sentences? 
I tune out when I hear someone using the word "like" as a punctuation mark.