Moving between nuisance, secrets, and splinters as data

“[Knowledge is] like the swift flight of a sparrow through the room where you sit at supper in winter…whilst the storms of rain and snow prevail outside; the [data]…while [it] is within, is safe from the wintry storm; but after a short space…[it] immediately vanishes out of your sight, into the dark winter from which [it] had emerged. So [data] appears for a short space, but of what went before, or what is to follow, we are utterly ignorant…”(after Bede, 1969, p104).