Drowning in Data - but bigger and more

[pmb]

Since from the time of Newton to now, we have come close to doubling knowledge every 17 years, more or less. And we cope with that, essentially, by specialization. In the next 340 years at that rate, there will be 20 doublings, i.e. a million, and there will be a million fields of specialty to every one field now. It isn't going to happen. The present growth of knowledge will choke itself off until we get different tools.

-Richard Hamming

So now you know. Right now all fields are groaning beneath the weight of their collective knowledge. Operations research, and statistics have already been squished out from the pile that is mathematics. IT has fallen out of the computer science knapsack. Biology has begat biochemistry and genetics and bioinformatics. Chemistry splintered away into materials science. English is now lit crit, historical lit, composition, linguistics, classics, and many others.

The foremost challenge, if we want to keep advancing, is going to be getting new tools to synthesize all of the crap that is being produced. But thew stuff that's being produced often isn't crap, it's often well thought out and new - there's just too much of it for me to read it and learn it. How can we go forward? Ben Franklin has been referred to as the last mean to have read every book ever written. This may apocryphal, or an out and out lie, but the point remains that I, much like Henry Rollins, go into a library, and get pissed off. I feel angry and cheated that I won't be able to read, digest, and understand all of this in my lifetime.

Natural philosophy doesn't even exist anymore, and the very idea of being well versed in so many fields seems kind of laughable today. This is completely unacceptable. I demand answers, and I demand action. I'm trying to make sure the internet stays healthy, so I think I'll have to fob this problem off on pearmeson, who it seems might have something to say about the crappitude of the current state of affairs.

Comments

[agthorr.livejournal.com]

Ben Franklin has been referred to as the last mean to have read every book ever written.

Do you know who has referred to him that way? I went looking on the web and couldn't find anything.

I read his autobiography some months ago. I think you'd enjoy it.

Have you read "How to Read a Book"?

[pmb.livejournal.com]

No reference for that quote, unfortunately.

How to Read a Book is on my desk in my office. Still unread.

[akjdg.livejournal.com]

Franklin could read Chinese?

[agthorr.livejournal.com]

Nah, he could only read, English, Latin, Spanish, French, and Italian!

[porfinn.livejournal.com]

Excuse me, Is "How to Read a Book" the one by Mortimer Adler? It has looked interesting; you found it worthwhile?

[agthorr.livejournal.com]

Yes. It's rather dry reading, but I found it rewarding. It changed the way I look at books and influenced the way I choose which books to read. I found it rather inspiring.

[j3h.livejournal.com]

good thing(?) the singularity is coming

[cubetime.livejournal.com]

Instead of pissing me off, it makes me feel hopeless. There is so much stuff that I'll never even know, much less be an expert in.

[pmb.livejournal.com]

Right, but the thing is that you are a very smart guy. If you tried, you could read and understand all that stuff. There is just too much of it. It's like we need some sort of new method to help us input, store, and manipulate knowledge. You are not being defeated by your own inabilities, it is the world conspiring against you to keep you as stupid as possible.

And that conspiracy of time wears me down...

[akjdg.livejournal.com]

"it is the world conspiring against you to keep you as stupid as possible."

WHAT? Peter, come back! Don't go off the deep end, please!

[pmb.livejournal.com]

Don't worry. My tongue is pretty firmly in my cheek. I just feel that it is a gross unfairness that it is impossible for me to become omniscient.

[cabanasloth.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough, I feel pretty much okay about this. I like to think that one of my good qualities as a researcher is an ability to rapidly skim stuff from way outside my field. I sure as hell am not well-versed in, say, coding theory, but I've been able to extract the bits that seem to be relevant to what I'm working on in not a great deal of time. I'd be less good if you set me loose in the biochemistry shelves, of course, and my knowledge of what the English prof/MLA types do is limited to an ability to read the same language they do. Perhaps the difference between us is that I totally do not care about biochem, and it seems like maybe you do?

On another note, a decent way to fake being well-versed is to read at least the abstracts of everything in Science and Nature. Most of it is totally incomprehensible outside of the article's particular field, but you can usually get the gist of it, and sometimes even figure out why somebody thinks this is important.

[kirin]

Direct brain upload.

Of course, we have to gain a fuckton more knowledge in the nuerochemistry/nuerobiology area before we can make that work.

[coldtortuga.livejournal.com]

As if teens don't already spin enough 'tude:
"Why, yes, actually -- I *DO* know everything!"

[pants-of-doom.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I'm really with you and Rollins on the getting mad bit. Other times I'm glad that I won't run out of interesting stuff to learn.

[amoken.livejournal.com]

Please tell me that quote was delivered orally and not in a published material. I don't think I could read an entire chapter written like that....

[pmb.livejournal.com]

Not only was it a talk, it was part of the Q&A session after the talk - http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html (from cabanasloth)

[porfinn.livejournal.com]

It is frustrating that there is so much to know and so little time. But my concern is that as different fields become more and more specific, so will the language. Look at computer speak. Not that the term "w00t" is ONLY used by the tech crowd, but chances are a group of costume designers wouldn't be familiar with it. Or take mathematics: a mathematician will use the word "graph" in a very different way then a business executive would. If they tried to communicate using their field-specific terminology understanding probably could not take place. Every specialization defines words its own way. Sometimes the definition is compatible and sometimes it isn't. I thought it would make a great story idea. In the future, the language between specializations has become too specific and translators are necessary. People who don't have to be specialized in any one field as long as they have a good grasp of the material in several and can translate the information between two, or more, groups. Probably it was just wishful thinking on my part: to be able to find a way to combine all of my interest into one useful skill.

[pmb.livejournal.com]

A professor in my department (http://www.cs.uoregon.edu/~dou/) is actually working on that specialized language problem, but he refers to it as "ontology translation". It seems a bit too strong-AI-ish to ever work, but apparently there is a large community working on the problem.

In the meantime, however, I do think that people who are not horribly deeply conversant in many fields will be more and more valuable in the future. I just wish everyone else though that way...

[porfinn.livejournal.com]

Back in the day when it was possible to read every book available the majority of folk couldn't read especially well. Now that we have a population that can (theoretically) read, the subject matter is getting more and more esoteric. It only makes sense, in a warped sort of way, that even though we can read it we still need it translated. I find this especially true around tax time; when trying to figure out what the hell politicians are actually saying; and when I was trying to figure out my grandmother's meds.

Thank you for the word “ontology”, I have enjoyed poking at it immensely. In keeping with current theatrical releases: "Tricky...I'll have to think about it."-- D.T.
(Unfortunately I don't have seven and a half million years)

Bingo

[akjdg.livejournal.com]

Without people to connect the dots, all of this 'horrible' knowledge runs the risk of being useless. Alas, rare is the discipline that can provide maximum benefit to society without some cross-pollination and hybridization with many other disciplines.

Makes me glad I went to Mudd, where the fundamental educational philosophy has strengthened my inherest propensity to the broad and shallow base of knowledge, with occasional pilings to keep it all together.

The senior man in our office is in his mid 70s, and his interests (largely coincident with my own) are represented by his personal folder on our server. just browsing his subfolder names is a succulent trip down the road of knowledge, and to dip into one of those folders is oft delightful with the information, data and other nectar he has harvested. The morsel of the week that he brought by was pocket sized fusion reactors that someone's developed. Neat stuff.

Hmm. All the culinary terminology leads me to think its dinner time in New Zealand.

Re: Bingo

[bettsbaby.livejournal.com]

Alas, rare is the discipline that can provide maximum benefit to society without some cross-pollination and hybridization with many other disciplines.

Enter the performing arts! A place where all the possibilities of humanity and all that we have learned/done so far can be brought into the public forum in an accessible and understandable medium for anyone. YES!!

I feel overwhelmed by all of this often because I feel it's my job as a theatre artist to know everything about everything so that I can best reflect the world around me in the work I create on stage. Talk about taking on the world.

[bookerz.livejournal.com]

And then, to further keep you down, to keep you from learning all you want to, you have to keep this job through about half your waking life. That's a big part of where the frustration comes in for me; not so much in the fact that I'll never be fully educated.