> One thing I'd note is that before that Internet era, the scholarship needed to discover who had done X previously took a really significant amount of time. The Internet has changed that a lot
It's exactly the opposite. You can now spend years just reading all the recent papers relevant to a quite specific topic of interest, and 20-80% of your time keeping up with new results.
If you narrow your research so much it's manageable you're immediately rejecting lots of directions right from the start.
It's exactly the opposite. You can now spend years just reading all the recent papers relevant to a quite specific topic of interest, and 20-80% of your time keeping up with new results.
If you narrow your research so much it's manageable you're immediately rejecting lots of directions right from the start.