On Government:
A Study Carrel and Distant Reading

A Distant Reader study carrel — 480 sources, ~14 million words

This is a Distant Reader study carrel and a distant reading on the topic of government. In it I address questions such as “What types of government exist?” and “What is the relationship between power and people?”

The reading is rooted in a Distant Reader study carrel (think “data set”) composed of 480 government-related books and journal articles for a total of about 14 million words. (The Bible is about .8 million words long, so this study carrel is about the size of 17 Bibles.) For more detail regarding the size and scope of the carrel, see the rudimentary bibliography as well as the computed summary page. The following word clouds begin to illustrate the scope of the carrel as well:

After creating the carrel I used an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server of my own design to query the carrel. More specifically, I used the server to address a number of things:

• What is the Distant Reader, the Distant Reader Toolbox, and Distant Reader study carrels?
  Because the Reader is probably foreign to you.
• Tell me about this particular carrel.
  Because it is a good idea to browse through a book before you actually begin reading it.
• Compose a speech on the topic of government as if written by a professor emeritus from a college of science.
  Just for fun; a gentle way to get your head around the size and scope of the carrel.
• What types of government exist, and what are their strengths and weaknesses?
  Not a complete list, but are you able to enumerate different types of government?
• What is the relationship between governmental power and the people being governed?
  Because the things above generated this as an interesting question, and it sounds like an interesting question to me.
• Outline a set of study questions on the topic of government.
  These will get your brain going.
• Tell me a few jokes about different government types walking into a bar.
  I think they are funny.