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The New Enlightenment and the Fight to Free Knowledge
How do we create a universe of truthful and verifiable information, available to everyone?
In THE NEW ENLIGHTENMENT, MIT Open Learning’s Peter B. Kaufman describes the powerful forces that have purposely crippled our efforts to share knowledge widely and freely.
Popes and their inquisitors, emperors and their hangmen, commissars and their secret police – throughout history, all have sought to staunch the free flow of information. Kaufman writes of times when the Bible could not be translated – you’d be burned for trying; when dictionaries and encyclopedias were forbidden; when literature and science and history books were trashed and pulped – sometimes along with their authors; and when efforts to develop public television and radio networks were quashed by private industry.
In the 21st century, the enemies of free thought have taken on new and different guises – giant corporate behemoths, sprawling national security agencies, gutted regulatory commissions. Bereft of any real moral compass or sense of social responsibility, their work to surveil and control us are no less nefarious than their 16th- and 18th- and 20th- century predecessors’. They are all part of what Kaufman calls the Monsterverse.
THE NEW ENLIGHTENMENT maps out the opportunities to mobilize for the fight ahead of us. With the Internet and other means of media production and distribution – video especially – at hand, knowledge institutions like universities, libraries, museums, and archives have a special responsibility now to counter misinformation, disinformation, and fake news – and especially efforts to control the free flow of information.
A film and video producer and former book publisher, Kaufman begins to draft a new social contract for our networked video age. He draws his inspiration from those who fought tooth and nail against earlier incarnations of the Monsterverse – including William Tyndale in the 16th century; Denis Diderot in the 18th; untold numbers of Soviet and Central and East European dissidents in the 20th – many of whom paid the ultimate price. Their successors? Advocates of free knowledge like Aaron Swartz, of free software like Richard Stallman, of an enlightened public television and radio network like James Killian, of a freer Internet like Tim Berners-Lee, of fuller rights and freedoms like Edward Snowden. All have been striving to secure for us a better world, marked by the right balance between state, society, and private gain.
The concluding section of the book, its largest piece, builds on their work, drawing up a progressive agenda for how today’s free thinkers can band together now to fight and win. With everything shut and everyone going online, THE NEW ENLIGHTENMENT is a rousing call to action that expands the definition of what it means to be a citizen in the 21st century.
In THE NEW ENLIGHTENMENT, MIT Open Learning’s Peter B. Kaufman describes the powerful forces that have purposely crippled our efforts to share knowledge widely and freely.
Popes and their inquisitors, emperors and their hangmen, commissars and their secret police – throughout history, all have sought to staunch the free flow of information. Kaufman writes of times when the Bible could not be translated – you’d be burned for trying; when dictionaries and encyclopedias were forbidden; when literature and science and history books were trashed and pulped – sometimes along with their authors; and when efforts to develop public television and radio networks were quashed by private industry.
In the 21st century, the enemies of free thought have taken on new and different guises – giant corporate behemoths, sprawling national security agencies, gutted regulatory commissions. Bereft of any real moral compass or sense of social responsibility, their work to surveil and control us are no less nefarious than their 16th- and 18th- and 20th- century predecessors’. They are all part of what Kaufman calls the Monsterverse.
THE NEW ENLIGHTENMENT maps out the opportunities to mobilize for the fight ahead of us. With the Internet and other means of media production and distribution – video especially – at hand, knowledge institutions like universities, libraries, museums, and archives have a special responsibility now to counter misinformation, disinformation, and fake news – and especially efforts to control the free flow of information.
A film and video producer and former book publisher, Kaufman begins to draft a new social contract for our networked video age. He draws his inspiration from those who fought tooth and nail against earlier incarnations of the Monsterverse – including William Tyndale in the 16th century; Denis Diderot in the 18th; untold numbers of Soviet and Central and East European dissidents in the 20th – many of whom paid the ultimate price. Their successors? Advocates of free knowledge like Aaron Swartz, of free software like Richard Stallman, of an enlightened public television and radio network like James Killian, of a freer Internet like Tim Berners-Lee, of fuller rights and freedoms like Edward Snowden. All have been striving to secure for us a better world, marked by the right balance between state, society, and private gain.
The concluding section of the book, its largest piece, builds on their work, drawing up a progressive agenda for how today’s free thinkers can band together now to fight and win. With everything shut and everyone going online, THE NEW ENLIGHTENMENT is a rousing call to action that expands the definition of what it means to be a citizen in the 21st century.
- GenresNonfictionTechnology
256 pages, Paperback
First published February 23, 2021
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126 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 22, 2021
An interesting take on ‘the New Enlightment’. Kaufman talks from his comfortable chair at MIT. He has a luxury of living, working, and publishing in a democracy. But behind his lofty language, I fail to see anything but a desperate attempt to preserve the status quo. He mentions revolutionaries like Nelson Mandela and Vaclav Havel, but personally he takes no risks.
Kaufman, like many other western intellectuals, tend to romanticize ‘velvet revolutions’ of Central and Eastern Europe as ‘bloodless’ but often offer an incomplete picture. Does a public execution by a firing squad of a head of state and his spouse counts as bloodless? That was one bloody Christmas Day in that country. Not enough space here for more of that.
Lastly, this book is written by an intellectual for intellectuals. Limited audience, limited impact, unless that was the intent here.
Kaufman, like many other western intellectuals, tend to romanticize ‘velvet revolutions’ of Central and Eastern Europe as ‘bloodless’ but often offer an incomplete picture. Does a public execution by a firing squad of a head of state and his spouse counts as bloodless? That was one bloody Christmas Day in that country. Not enough space here for more of that.
Lastly, this book is written by an intellectual for intellectuals. Limited audience, limited impact, unless that was the intent here.
October 22, 2023
Peter Kaufman's 2021 book brings a refreshing display of great wit and a fine nose for historical drama to his campaign for a twentieth-century world in which the privilege of learning and the right to know are fare more widely realized. Rather that relying on the techno-euphoria that often inspires calls for digital-era calls for universal access to knowledge, Kaufman brings to life and to this cause a handful of key historical figures, such as the martyr William Tyndale who gave his life to bring the Bible to English-reading public for the first time in the 16th century and Denis Diderot, who in the 18th century risked imprisonment to open the gates of learning with the Encyclopédie. One can't help but get caught up in the twists and turns of this historic struggle to free knowledge, which Kaufman delivers with the lightest of touches, quick to out the fibs and frauds, as well as celebrate the heroic. Yet he is not just a student of this vital history, as Kaufman proves to be have been a Cold War witness of Eastern European suppression of knowledge for which he provides an arresting eye-witness account of the underground again in the pursuit of freeing knowledge. Having set the groundwork for this basic human right, Kaufman turns to this "new enlightenment" in which he and I both see much promise (full disclosure; we have appeared on panels together on these themes), and yet with as many opportunities to mess it up, as he points out in far saltier language. He is not afraid to wear his passion, if lightly, on his sleeve: "We might (this means: we should) therefore want to start (this means we should start right away)," he cajoles in calling for a commission dedicated to fixing this "modern and broke information ecosystem." One is moved, in this book, by both common sense and righteous indignation, while being energized in this fight by Kaufman seldom missing an opportunity to jostle your sensibilities with a clever aside, as he plays out, for example, the Moby Dick analogies of "Sargasso Sears of online lies and fakery" in which he slips in the funniest deadpan footnote I have encountered in a lifetime of favoring sub-rosa texts. All told, Kaufman's case is solid, his evidence vivid, and his path forward worth pursuing, even as the journey is relentlessly engaging. And true to its title and spirit, Kaufman has made this finely published book (by Seven Stories Press) freely available online.
February 23, 2021
Throughout the centuries, almost all those in power, whether religious or secular, have tried more or less clearly to block the circulation of information and now this is more true than ever, even the author speaks of a Monsterverse. As disturbing and frightening as it may be, it is not that we are helpless in the face of this situation and the author in the final appendix also provides us with tools and ways to try to fight "the enemy" and allow the free use of information without it being manipulated for other purposes.
Attraverso i secoli, quasi tutti quelli che erano al potere, fosse esso religioso o secolare, hanno cercato in modo piú o meno chiaro di bloccare la circolazione delle informazione e adesso questo é piú che mai vero, addirittura l'autore parla di un Monsterverse. Per quanto inquietante e spaventoso, non é che siamo inermi davanti a questa situazione e l'autore nell'appendice finale ci fornisce anche strumenti e modalitá per cercare di combattere "il nemico" e permettere la libera fruizione delle informazioni senza che queste vengano in qualche modo manipolate per fini ulteriori.
THANKS EDELWEISS FOR THE PREVIEW!
Attraverso i secoli, quasi tutti quelli che erano al potere, fosse esso religioso o secolare, hanno cercato in modo piú o meno chiaro di bloccare la circolazione delle informazione e adesso questo é piú che mai vero, addirittura l'autore parla di un Monsterverse. Per quanto inquietante e spaventoso, non é che siamo inermi davanti a questa situazione e l'autore nell'appendice finale ci fornisce anche strumenti e modalitá per cercare di combattere "il nemico" e permettere la libera fruizione delle informazioni senza che queste vengano in qualche modo manipolate per fini ulteriori.
THANKS EDELWEISS FOR THE PREVIEW!
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews