Too Big to Know: Chapter 2 - Summary and Response

In Chapter Two of David Weinberger’s Too Big to Know, he opens the chapter by discussing how humans are built to stop searching for an answer once an answer is reached, so that we may search further for more information. In other words, we do not try to find the same answer four times over, we take the sources word for it, at least when the source is credentialed. Weinberger then goes on to discuss the emergence of facts and how knowledge in today’s world is built on the foundation of facts, but in the ancient world the foundation was, instead analogies, a way in which the ancients were able to draw connections in their world and explain things.  Weinberger also traces the development of facts from being universals to being particulars, leading from deductive reasoning into inductive reasoning, causing scientific theories such as Francis Bacon's theory of gases. Next, Weinberger discusses the significance of facts, that, when used, demand trust and backup arguments; he later addresses that there are now so many facts that for virtually every fact in an argument there is a readily available counter fact. Weinberger continues to discuss the evolution of the use of facts when he discusses the 1830s, when Jeremy Bentham convinced Parliament to treat everyone in the society as equals by using facts to construct statistics in order to make decisions for the society. He then moves on to the 1890s-1930s where facts become the way to settle disputes, both local and international through fact-finding missions.  Next, Weinberger discusses different types of facts that emerge through discussing Darwin’s “this is that” method of fact finding versus a service entitled Hunch, which asks questions to discover facts about you in order to use statistics to make suggestions for you. Further down the line the government creates “Data Commons,” which are data made public because they have no reason to be kept secret. Weinberger concludes this chapter by reviewing the phases of facts; he discusses Classic facts which are relatively sparse, painstakingly discovered and used to prove theories, database facts which cover a handful of fields, chosen and organized by a hand full of people, and networked facts which are facts linked to more information about the context of the fact as well as open to a network of disagreement. (38-39) This chapter discusses the emergence and the role that facts play.

In Chapter Two of Too Big to Know, according to Weinberger we are built to put stopping points on our inquisitions once we get an answer, we do this because this opens us up to further inquiries and once we get an answer from a credentialed source we see no reason to cross check as that would take more time, resources, energy, and money in most cases.  Weinberger later moves on to the subject of facts, discussing how “facts” to the ancients meant universals from which there were able to use inductive reasoning to further their knowledge. Weinberger writes that rather than talk about this cat or that cat, they would talk about all cats. (25) This has helped us build knowledge today because we are able to adopt this inductive reasoning, instead of needing to know about or study each individual in  a population, we are able to form generalizations that are applicable to each individual, which I believe helps us to compartmentalize and thus retain our knowledge. Additionally, this idea later developed into facts being specifics, or particulars, which are used to form scientific theories about universals. Weinberger brings up Thomas Robert Mathus’ book in his discussion about facts, starting by describing the initial volume that had very little factual information. He them goes on to discuss how this book seems almost appalling with its generalizations, but them discusses how Mathus implemented facts once they became more accessible and how this changed his piece. Weinberger discusses this book in order to contrast a time when facts were rare and hard to find, to a time where facts were more readily available and how this shifted society from having an objective to a more subjective point of view.  Counter to the progression of the world around him at the time, Charles Dickens was against the implementation of facts; he thought that the implementation of facts would cause the destruction of imagination. While I see where Dickens was coming from, I do not think he took into account the fact that there is room for both facts and imagination in the world and much of imagination seems to be built by using pieces of facts. Weinberger continues his discussion about facts by comparing and contrasting Charles Darwin’s facts with facts generated by Hunch.com. Similarities between the two include that they are both facts and used to predict other things, but while Darwin’s facts are proving a scientific theory, Hunch’s facts are predicting things about the user. Additionally, Darwin’s facts were scarce and took years to discover and years to come together to prove his theory. On the other hand, Hunch’s facts are the result of asking questions, they do not specifically prove anything, they are used to compare to other users to predict what a specific user may like, but not necessarily. As time went on, Weinberger writes that networked facts emerge, providing more and more facts. As he points out, this leads to more facts about the context of a fact, but, as a downfall, this opens up a network of facts to cause disagreements. In other words, facts can no longer solve disagreements as easily as they used to.

Too Big to Know: Chapter 1 - Summary and Response

To begin the first chapter of his book, Too Big to Know, David Weinberger discusses the DIKW hierarchy.  This hierarchy resembles the structure of a pyramid where data is on the bottom, then information, then knowledge, and on the top, in the smallest portion of the pyramid lies wisdom. Weinberger explains that to get from one level of the pyramid to the next requires the processing of the current level, for example, one must process data to get information. Weinberger then expands on the topic of knowledge, exploring different views throughout time as well as views that have continued to hold true. Specifically, he discusses the view of ancient Athens that in order to for someone to be knowledgeable they must hold opinions that are both true and justifiable. (4) Next Weinberger transitions into a discussion about the evolution of knowledge as a filter. He discusses how knowledge used to be processing and retaining things necessary to our success and filtering out unnecessary information, but now, due to our seemingly endless resources we go through information trying to retain as much as we can about something, rather than just what we need to know.  Weinberger continues by discussing the need to fix our way of filtering in order to avoid the overload of information and how the control of filters is changing from experts to those closer to the general population, who we know. Then Weinberger points out that due to the influx of readily available information there is more good information, but also more bad information, there is more information readily available to prove a point, but also to contest that point. Finally, Weinberger ends the chapter by discussing the new structure of knowledge and its emergence as a wide and populous network rather than a pyramid. Through this chapter, Weinberger explores what knowledge is and its evolution through time as well as the evolution of how knowledge is used and handled.

Through this chapter Weinberger expresses that knowledge is a result of a strive to understand, it is our ability to retain and understand information as well as connect it to other things in a network. He discusses how knowledge grows and morphs as resources change; as the internet became readily available, so did information and places to store it. Due to the fact that we are no longer limited by a space as small as a library and we can find seemingly endless articles about a given subject, knowledge has become trying to know all you can rather than just what you need. As Weinberger points out, the old fear about knowledge was that all of the available information would cause a mental breakdown versus now, where the fear is that not enough of the information we need is being received because there is so much out there. I do agree with this point made by Weinberger, today it is hard to tell if you know enough about something, whether enough research was done, whether the correct articles and publications were read, because ultimately there will always be more than a couple of days of research will reveal, whereas when books were all that was available, there seems to be an endpoint, a point where you had to have done enough research. Additionally, in the past, Weinberger points out that, available knowledge was filtered out by the storage capacity of things like a library, a library will not have endless books on one subject, but will rather have a handful of books on that subject. On the other hand, currently the internet doers not filter out information, but rather filters forward information, which Weinberger explains by saying that the most relevant or credentialed or interesting or liked results will be at the beginning of a search, but behind the first page of results lies an ongoing list of more sources that are less relevant, or less credentialed, or less interesting, or less liked by your friends. Nevertheless, as Weinberger points out, these ‘bad’ sources are still out there. Furthermore, Weinberger discusses how the institution of knowledge is changing, how the pyramid structure is giving way to the network structure, which is wider, seemingly boundary-free, and full of not just full-time experts. Weinberger illustrates this with the example of Jack Hidary, who employs people to peer review works. Unlike before, these employees are not a small group of set full-time experts or full-time peer reviewers, rather there is a larger group of part-time experts to choose from.  Through Chapter one of Too Big to Know Weinberger discusses what knowledge is and how various aspects of knowledge, how it is produced, spread, altered, accessed, and applied has changed over time.