Many of the problems we face in the world today—the global pandemic, the economic crisis, political violence of the kind that rocked the US Capitol in January—are the result of our severe information disorder. How do we create a universe of truthful and verifiable information, available to everyone?

We are swimming in a sea of lies, but what can we do about it? MIT Open Learning’s Peter Kaufman has some suggestions. For starters, it might be time to think anew about our rights to knowledge, our approach to the public sphere, and our concept of information and the public good.

In his book, The New Enlightenment And The Fight To Free Knowledge, Kaufman fills us in on the history of knowledge and the price that was exacted to disseminate it. What can we do to counter the powerful forces that have purposely crippled our efforts to share knowledge widely and freely?

Resources contributed by the speakers:

• Listen to Wikipedia by Hatnote
• The New Enlightenment and the Fight to Free Knowledge by Peter B. Kaufman
• This book is also available through Open Culture
• American Archives of Public Broadcasting—a joint effort by GBH and the Library of Congress
• Volunteer for Transcript-a-thons and Wikipedia Edit-a-thons with AAPB
• Work by Elizabeth Seger
• Truth, Dissent & the Legacy of Daniel Ellsberg
• “The secret lives of Facebook moderators in America“
• “Trump, defying custom, hasn’t given the National Archives records of his speeches at political rallies“
• The Idealist: Aaron Swartz And The Rise Of Free Culture On The Internet

This program is the third in our Transformations series, which has been examining the various ways in which the pandemic has acted as an agent of change.  Schools and libraries have been closed for a year, has this made a big difference to your life and the lives of your children; do you feel deprived?

Speakers

Peter Kaufman

Peter Kaufman is a writer, teacher, and documentary producer who works at MIT Open Learning. He’s joined by Casey Davis-Kaufman (no relation), Associate Director of GBH Archives and Project Manager for the American Archive of Public Broadcasting.