The Fourth Revolution in the Means of Production of Knowledge
In Post-Gutenberg Galaxy: The Fourth Revolution in the Means of Production of Knowledge, Stevan Harnad argues that human cognition and communication have undergone three qualitative revolutions—speech, writing, and print—each fundamentally altering how knowledge is produced and shared, and that a fourth revolution is now emerging through “electronic skywriting” (networked email and discussion groups). Harnad traces how speech enabled truth-valued propositions, writing preserved them independently of any speaker, and print distributed them independently of any hand-copier, with each shift mediated by speed and scale; he then contends that early electronic networks like Usenet and Bitnet, despite their chaotic “pre-revolutionary” state, offer the potential to restore scholarly communication to a speed closer to thought itself while adding unprecedented global scope and interactivity. Drawing on his own experience with online discussion that generated the “symbol grounding problem,” and his founding of the electronic journal PSYCOLOQUY, Harnad proposes a model of rapid, refereed, open peer commentary that archives scholarly exchange permanently without the temporal and spatial constraints of print. He acknowledges obstacles—including the then-current demographics of the Net, ingrained scholarly habits, and resistance from the paper publishing industry—but predicts that libraries burdened by print costs, learned societies seeking faster dissemination, and scholars themselves (who create and quality-control the literature through peer review) will hasten the transition, ultimately launching scholarship into a post-Gutenberg galaxy where electronic journals are not mere clones of paper but demonstrate unique, indispensable capabilities.