Technology, Scholarship, and the Humanities: The Implications of Electronic Information

The author discusses his concerns about the fragmentation of knowledge, resulting from more than 2,000 years of information collection, which is exacerbated by the recent explosion in information technologies. The growth and fragmentation of knowledge has resulted in a proliferation of specialties, which is reflected in the expanding curricula of the universities. Specialization, instead of uniting human values and discourse, allows us to organize ourselves into separate communities. At the same time, information technologies present us with the opportunity and tools for meeting the challenges caused by the explosion of information and fragmentation of knowledge.