Episode notes
A swarm of AI agents flagged a 27-year-old cousin of Prussian blue as a candidate for next-generation computer memory. Don R. Swanson showed in 1986 how such hidden links form, and how anyone can hunt for them.
The Man Who Read Two Shelves At Once
Imagine a library with two rooms. In the first room sit hundreds of papers explaining that a certain substance thins the blood, calms the platelets and relaxes the blood vessels. In the second room sit hundreds of papers explaining that a certain disease grows worse when the blood is thick, the platelets are sticky and the vessels clamp down. The researchers in each room are diligent, and they publish carefully. They simply never walk down the hall.
In 1986 a professor at the University of Chicago walked down the hall. His name was Don R. Swanson, and the papers he published that year gave a name to what he found in the space between the two rooms: undiscovered public knowledge.
Read more at: ReadMultiplex.com
Support this work by buying us a coffee: https://ko-fi.com/brianroemmele