The term 'Information Age' has been used so much that we are all supposed to know what it means. In most cases, people think of the Internet boom and the digital information we get from it. However, the term also refers to the fact that people are becoming more and more dependent on computers and networks that provide 'virtual' info on anything and everything. Since knowledge is freedom, it is implied that the Information Age is the age of liberation.Is this really the case? For a number of reasons, the answer is no. First of all, information is not necessarily freedom. On the contrary, information inflation is becoming a serious problem. How to store digital information has become a sector in itself. What do you with tens of millions of reports, articles, statistics, graphics, pictures, et cetera that are published every day? If you do not know what you really need, having "stuff " is simply a burden.Secondly, the much-praised Information Age is based on confusion between information and knowledge. What is out there on the Internet, in the virtual world of billions of websites and info-graphics, is "data," not knowledge. The difference between the two is that while information provides the quantitative, statistical and numerical enlisting of things, knowledge signifies synthesis, perception and understanding. Knowledge is based on reason and experience. "Data" cannot be a substitute for knowledge; data by itself is a soulless collection of facts, figures and numbers. Having the largest set of data a few clicks away does not mean that we have gained knowledge.Knowledge is based on a cognitive and deeper grasp of the meaning of things. Unlike data and information, it is not a set of cold facts and numbers. Knowledge is something existential and personal at once. Its goal is to enlighten us and make us better human beings.Meaning is key here, and brings us to the threshold of wisdom.The ancient Greeks were well aware of the central role of meaning and purpose in our pursuit of knowledge. Plato placed the ultimate meaning of things in the world of Ideas or Forms, which transcend the ephemeral limitations of the material world and provide a firmer basis for sound knowledge. Aristotle defined wisdom as knowing the cause of things and why things are the way they are. Even a "scientist" like Aristotle could not explain the meaning of things by simply referring to the things themselves in a tautological manner. Instead, he urged his students to go beyond the question of "what," which the basic sciences answer, and dwell on the "why" of things, which is the proper subject matter of philosophy as wisdom.Until the modern period, the meaning of things was believed to reside in something higher than the things themselves. Reducing meaning to the physical components of things was considered absurd. It was like defining the meaning of a book with its page numbers, paper quality, ink and cover. Rather, meaning was defined as something that gave things their true essence, purpose and function.In this view, human reason discovers meaning, and when it appropriates and internalizes it, it achieves wisdom. The meaning that a book conveys transcends its physical properties.Most Islamic languages have the word "hikmah" for wisdom. Interestingly, its root meaning is "to restrain" and "to prevent." The object of restrain includes ignorance, injustice and foolishness. Wisdom is that which prevents us from epistemic errors and moral vices. Wisdom connotes knowledge, justice, bliss, forbearance and uprightness. Knowledge leads to wisdom when it induces us to combine understanding and virtue or knowledge and practice. As the ninth century Muslim scholar Ibn Qutayba said, "A man is not called hakim (wise) unless he combines the two."That is why philosophy is never simply mental gymnastics. As Pythagoras famously said, wisdom belongs to God; we immortals can only love wisdom. And wisdom means knowing the reality of things and acting accordingly. Philosophy shorn of ethics and reduced to a mere interpretation of science is simply bad philosophy.The Islamic intellectual tradition conceived of wisdom as the unifying element of all sciences and types of knowledge. That is why the earliest centers of learning were called House of Wisdom (Bayt al-Hikmah). This is where philosophical, scientific and technological studies were carried out in an integrated manner.The reason we have lost wisdom in the digital age is because we have lost sight of our existence. Modernism created a one-dimensional concept of reality and reduced the meaning of things to the epistemic competencies of the knowing subject. This landed us in radical subjectivism. Postmodernism stuck to an antirealist ontology whereby it claimed that there is no essence, no foundation, no substance except for what we make of the world. This wild claim had a lot of currency against the hegemony of classical modernism and rationalism but lost much of its élan recently.Perhaps it is time to reconsider the meaning of serious philosophical thinking and recover the enduring relevance of wisdom for humanity in the 21st century. If the Information Age in which we live is to have any meaning, it will be not through more data and information but through a deeper reflection on the meaning of things.