Technology has been good to the pursuit of knowledge. Each advance, from cuneiform to computer chip, spurs us to push the limits of knowledge further. The benefits of the newest innovation — the digital — are obvious: more evidence. A lot more. The world’s largest radio telescope, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), is expected to produce "up to one exabyte (10 to the 18th bytes) of data per day, roughly the amount handled by the entire Internet in 2000." The radical reduction of barriers to reading and publishing online has resulted in an abundance of cultural expression in audio, video, textual, and numeric formats. The horizons of knowledge are receding not simply because we have more evidence. We also have powerful tools to analyze data at scale, see beyond the limits of human perception, and discern patterns invisible to the naked eye.

May 4, 2016 ・ From Chronicle of Higher Education