There’s a turnaround point I’ve never quite reached all the way down West Sands. I walk the stretch most days – the route about four miles, or six kilometers, total – and every time, somewhere at the northern end of the sands, I have to decide where to turn around. I could, technically, keep going, following the coast as it curves away from St Andrews Bay and flows into Eden Mouth, out past where I usually turn. At some point I have to decide that today’s walk is this walk, not the longer one it could have been.
I technically finished my Laidlaw research four days ago. But as I write this, I still haven’t quite decided where my turnaround – from research to writing – point is.
My project looks at how technology and AI are reshaping economics and governance – which, on paper, sounds like a topic in itself. In practice, it’s been a slow process of narrowing: what do I actually mean by “technology,” which sectors of “economics,” which parts of “governance.” Every few days throughout the research period my project has quietly redefined itself as I’ve discovered and understood more of what’s actually in front of me. And because the subject is moving in real time (there is, right now especially, a lot of noise around it) stopping research doesn’t feel like a natural point. It feels arbitrary, the way turning around on a beach that could keep stretching is arbitrary. The coast, and research, keeps going whether or not I do.
What’s made this decision harder is how I’ve found some of my most central sources. A few of the readings that ended up taking my research down a new path and that altered how I think about this topic weren’t the obvious ones: they were a hyperlink buried in someone else’s footnote, or a throwaway reference that was positioned as an afterthought. Which means now I can’t stop thinking: how many more sources that would be valuable to my research are still out there, ones I’ll just never find because, at some point, the research period must end? It’s an unreasonable thing to worry about – nobody covers everything, and I know that – but knowing it intellectually and feeling settled about it are two different things.
One of my favorite books is Trust by Hernan Diaz. Not to spoil too much: The novel tells the same underlying story four separate times, from four different times, from four different vantage points, and each version corrects, complicates, or quietly undermines the one before it. None of them is the true account – the book never actually gives you that – but each is still a complete and legitimate telling in its own right, valid on the terms it sets for itself. The last version isn’t final because it’s exhaustive; it’s final because it’s the one the book happens to end on. That distinction has been doing a lot of work for me this past week. Nothing I write this summer could ever be the last word on the intersection of technology, economics, and governance – especially given how fast the ground is shifting under the topic.
So: I’m choosing to think of the end of the research period the way I think of my usual turnaround point on West Sands. Eden Mouth doesn’t stop existing because I didn’t walk to it today (or, so far, ever). The footnotes I didn’t chase down don’t stop being interesting and important because the research period ended. They’re just outside the walk I’ve decided to take this time – and deciding where a walk, or research, ends is not the same thing as deciding the coastline, or topic, stops there.