Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

Ravit Lichtenberg has written an interesting piece "10 Ways Social Media Will Change in 2009" delivering his perspective of the status quo and what's likely ahead in social media.

Ravit notes that while everyone seemingly is looking to leverage the power of social media—“social media today is (sic) a pure mess: it has become a collection of countless features, tools, and applications fighting for a piece of the pie.”

John Naisbitt made his oft-quoted comment "we're drowning information yet starved for knowledge" in Megatrends, way back in back in 1982. If we were drowning then, where are we now?

Despite all the innovations in tagging, SEO, new tools, etc.-- locating content and reliable sources on topics that are highly relevant and personally important is getting more and more difficult. Twitter Tweets on what someone had for lunch are a waste of time. While Social Media enable transparent communications-- we still can't effectively separate the wheat from the chaff?

Companies seeking to leverage social media for benefits—shouldn’t confuse the technology of communications with the higher purposes of communications:
connection, exchange, alignment, and learning

Leave it to a poet to articulate this much better:

“Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”
T.S. Eliot “Choruses from The Rock” (1934)