Big Understanding

There are too many books to read. It is no longer really possible to read everything in a field and synthesize it in a careful and nuanced way. Historians and Literary Critics either have to choose a very narrow focus without general application, or write very Big books which end up being inaccurate and limited by the blindspots of their author.

I do not believe this is an inherent limit of humanity or an inescapable result of knowledge accessibility. Using new digital and AI techniques we should be exploring ways to enhance understanding of large bodies of knowledge. This will have to go beyond the simple quantification of early Digital Humanities and create really deep knowledge. It's a hard problem, but I believe it to be a crucial one.