Erin Kissane on Knowledge Erosion and the Illusion of Explanatory Depth

In a wide ranging, but compulsively readable essay, Erin Kissane discusses how information systems for knowledge can suddenly erode, and how easy it is for us to assume we understand something when we do not. A cartoon model of collective knowledge-making goes like this: Some people—scientists, reporters, scholars, fixers and builders—go out and mess around with the surfaces of the world and…