I recently had a conversation about technology’s impact on research today. It’s an argument I could make myself—that technology has resulted in access to more data and information. For example, before the invention of moveable type and the printing press, the only books that were available were chained to reading tables in Europe’s great cathedrals—they were that rare and that valuable.

BUT: Does technology give me access to BETTER data and information? I believe the answer to that is no, for a very specific reason: It leaves out the all-important human element in the knowledge molecule, the element that makes sense of the data and then converts it to information. Have a listen.