There's an interesting correspondence with water and data going even further back than that in the English language, think about how often you hear variations on "learning through osmosis" or "hopefully I will pick that up through osmosis". Osmosis is specifically diffusion of water. It's fascinating that so many speakers of English refer to it as "learning through osmosis" rather than the more accurate and less water-centric "diffusive learning".

I've no idea of the etymology for this or why this conflation is surprisingly so deep in contemporary English culture, I've just been fascinated by it for a long time.