[tediousdemise]

The Human Brain Project is a somewhat failed experiment to understand the brain in its entirety. They started by taking human brain cross sections and imaging them down to neuronal resolution, but the scans took up so much space that there wouldn't be enough capacity on the entire planet to store a complete human brain scan. This is a challenge of compression inasmuch as it is a challenge of understanding brains.

I question if progress in any given field X is completely and unequivocally hindered by progress in a dependent field Y. If this is the case, dependencies better be known up front before embarking on any project, unless you like wasting time and money.