Summary and Response to Chapter 2 of Too Big To Know

 In chapter two of David Weinberger’s, Too Big to Know, Weinberger discusses how facts and knowledge have changed drastically over the past several hundred years. Weinberger states that knowledge according to the ancients used to be about universals, and that facts at one point in time, facts could be based on social, political, or astronomical beliefs. However, when the nineteenth century rolled around, Weinberger says things started to change. Theories started to become more of a popular way to collect evidence, and eventually facts moved from the realm of science to the world of politics. Facts started to become the basis of policy and settling international disputes. As time went on, facts became “the elemental truths about the world.” (Weinberger, 31) While facts themselves have changed, the way we acquire them have as well. While knowledge used to take took years and years to collect, analyze, and publish, now knowledge and facts are available at people’s fingertips. Websites like hunch.com, data.gov, and FuelEconomy.gov make an immense amount of facts accessible to anyone in the blink of en eye. Weinberger warns that this fast and simple system is not necessarily perfect. Due to the fact that anyone can access any type of information, Weinberger explains that it is quite easy to be wrong nowadays. There will always be contradicting facts and arguments that make it more of a challenge to prove a point. Weinberger also claims that because there is so much knowledge, people put stopping points to their research, meaning, if they find credentials that they believe are reliable, people will stop searching for answer. Weinberger argues that facts are no longer doing their job because there are no longer elemental truths, and the more facts people acquire, the harder it will be to keep a firm foundation of knowledge.


Weinberger states that there is such an incomprehensible amount of knowledge in the world that once we get an answer we find is believable, we stop searching for more information. This is especially true when we acquire knowledge from trusted sources with credentials, such as almanacs. We automatically assume every fact is accurate, which is not always the case. In ancient times, people actually found the concept of facts to be offensive and wrong. Knowledge was accepted because it was something that was universal and given by God. Facts were the incorrect way to use God's gifts. This concept ultimately changed as time went on, and facts slowly started to become more present in society. A prime example of this are the writings of Thomas Robert Malthus. In 1798, Malthus stated a very well known "fact" regarding population growth and it's relationship to food supply. While Malthus starts off giving us a fairly logical assumption, he quickly backs up his "facts" with his own personal bias' and beliefs. It is so simple to state your own opinion and make it seem true, even though you may not have the statistics and evidence to actually prove your point. Malthus only made generalizations, he never actually looked into and researched his theory. As facts grew in popularity, many people became outspoken against them, particularly Charles Dickens. Dickens felt that facts allowed important social issues, like poverty, to not be viewed as the complex and deep problems that they are. Facts portrayed these huge issues in trivial and unimportant ways. Facts, however, are an essential part of life today. Comparing the work of Charles Darwin and a website like Hunch.com proves how far we've come. Darwin spent years and years trying to perfect facts that he would eventually contribute to science. Hunch answer questions in seconds. Darwin was researching something that was actually significant, while Hunch uncovers and generates facts, many of which are trivial. Charles darwin was guided by a theory and only found facts that were bigger than the individual scale. Neither of these things are the case for Hunch. While both have to do with finding facts, time has completely changed the way we get knowledge. Facts are now completely accessible to the public, meaning that anyone can dispute what you may claim to be a fact with their own acquired knowledge. There is such a vast amount of information available to the world that anything or anyone can be contradicted.

Summary and Response to Chapter 1 of Too Big To Know

 In David Weinberger’s 2011 book, Too Big to Know, Weinberger explains the significance of knowledge in the current internet age. The concept of knowledge has changed significantly over the years, according to Weinberger. Knowledge used to fit into a “perfectly ordered whole” and was considered an object of perfect beauty in the West. As time elapsed, knowledge began to accumulate, forcing the creation of a new way to filter the information into a manageable whole. This idea was harnessed in the Information Age where computers began to take a minuscule amount of filtered knowledge, and provide it to the public. Weinberger explains, however, that these extreme filters excluded many knowledgeable opinions and ideas, which ultimately led to the formation of false beliefs. This was caused by the misconception that there was too much knowledge and that information overload would occur. This belief was wrong, according to Weinberger, because now knowledge is about including everything. Current filters on the internet only remove the amount of clicks people need to get somewhere; not the content that people seek. Weinberger argues that filters are no longer filtering things out, but filtering forward, including opinions and facts from everywhere and everyone. The networks are expanding from professional experts, to people we are familiar with and trust. This, Weinberger states, is problematic because the filters are bringing forward any information, opinions, and “facts” many of which can be inaccurate or ignorant. People now can always be contradicted because it is possible to find any argument online that supports a certain belief. Although filters are not necessarily doing their job, Weinberger argues that the web is a medium big enough to contain all of the knowledge people need, and that has changed the way knowledge is being perceived forever.

In Chapter One of Too Big To Know, Weinberger says knowledge is made up of data that gives us information that eventually has greater value. Knowledge used to, as Weinberger states, "...fit together in a perfectly ordered whole." (3) It was beautiful and without fault. As time went on, there was so much to understand that we started to filter and reduce what we as a people actually need to know. This created a more manageable system. We felt that there was so much information out in the world, that we couldn't possibly store it all in our minds. So we created this exceptional filtering system that filtered things out including concepts that no one would have ever considered, concepts that may contradict things that are false but seen as facts. We now filter things forward, bringing all the knowledge we want to learn into the foreground, making it much easier to get the knowledge we want. Weinberger noted that our brains are not limiting us, but the way we use the media to get past what our brains cannot do. The role of being online- specifically networking-  has vastly changed the way we acquire knowledge. Information has no end because every link you find that is related to your question, directs you somewhere else, and it goes on and on. We live in a society where we need more and more information. The concept of information overload does not hold the same meaning that it had in the past. Anyone can learn whatever they please because there are no boundaries and no need for experts to do things for you. The way we acquire knowledge is ever-changing, and as time goes by, we will see more efficient ways of learning and more information being brought to our attention.