How did we get where we are today?

It wasn't always a world of data rich, information poor, it was once a world of data poor, information poor. But we have climbed out of that mire.

What happened was an evolution of systems. The advent of powerful computers and cheap programming allowed for the development of more advanced applications.

This allowed for embedding of logic and business rules into the program, and away from more expensive human interactions. It has made possible the cheap operation of large scale business operations with a minimum of experts and a larger number of "clerks".

So the cheaper clerks were kept busy entering all the data that fed these hungry systems, and it became necessary to report on the all this myriad of activity.

Thus began the slippery slide to the world of information paucity.