I found this reading to be a fascinating examination of how data has changed our understanding of the humanities, and raised several points about data’s role in the humanities that I never considered. I never thought that some that the challenges surrounding understanding large amount of data in more techincal fields were also paralleled in the humanities My assumption was that increased access to the data only contributed to our understanding of the human condition. Yet Schöch argues that Big Data is contributing to a paradxical shift where we are more concerned with with distant reading and comparing trends among collections, than with close reading. I disagree with Schöch’s opposition to big data; while I think in the future we need to improve out capacity to draw insights from big data, I think there is some value in using it to understand broad trends and ideas in the humanitites that close reading doesn’t always allow us to so easily.