Media vs. the ‘Monsterverse’ (It’s Not about Godzilla)

In his new book, “The New Enlightenment and the Fight to Free Knowledge,” Peter Kaufman (an author who lives in Lakeville, Conn.) takes us deep into history to locate the moments when information was made accessible to the people — and the moments when making it accessible was a crime punishable by death.

Part history, part polemic, “The New Enlightenment” is a call to action to Make Knowledge Great Again (MKGA?). Kaufman draws inspiration from the 18th-century French Encyclopédie — the first comprehensive encyclopedia available to the masses, which sparked the original Enlightenment — and its modern equivalent, Wikipedia. He also looks longingly to the brief, but abortive, golden age of public television, when leading American thinkers envisioned a medium for, well, enlightenment.

Aligned against such progressive dreams is what Kaufman calls the “Monsterverse,” a complicated brew of both too much deregulation and too much private control of media, not to mention the rampant anti-intellectualism and counterfactual QAnon-ism of our present moment.

We interviewed Kaufman recently about his book, which was published Feb. 25.

Compass: You finished “The New Enlightenment” last year and wrote about the threat of literal violence from the unregulated circulation of ideas. Having seen the events of Jan. 6 and the storming of the Capitol, how do you feel about what you wrote now?

Peter Kaufman: The book ends with a vision of the nation beginning to tear itself in two, and violently, because of our information disorder. In fact, the health, economic and political crises we face are all due in large measure to this disorder. It surprises me we don’t talk about it more.

C: Explain what you call the “information disorder.”

PK: Mark Twain once said, “A lie will travel around the whole world while the truth is getting its boots on.” That’s especially true when the lie comes from literally the most powerful person on the planet. On one hand, you have this system of politicians echoing media networks and vice versa; Trump brought that into a new adulthood. On the other, the richest and deepest knowledge institutions — a Field Museum in Chicago, or a MOMA [Museum of Modern Art] in New York — deal in fact and what’s true. But they’re not empowered to counter the disinformation.

C: Isn’t the web the great equalizer and democratizer? Someone can find almost any information they want, or take a free online course. Isn’t that what the creators of the Encyclopédie were after? Why regulate that?

PK: These are great freedoms, just as I can walk to the Scoville Library and look at anything on the shelf, or to the Salisbury Pharmacy for a newspaper or magazine. What’s missing are good books, magazines and newspapers. The progressive forces in this country need to publish more. Or think about the original impetus for television and the screen as an educational apparatus. Things unfolded differently. The forces on the other side managed to hack away at regulations and restrictions on what can and can’t be seen. We should regulate for the same reason it’s not a good idea to allow drugs to be sold on a playground.

C: But what about Trump being banished from social media? If he could be banned, couldn’t you or I? A lot of people on the left are equally concerned. Who decides what’s allowable or not?

PK: You’re forgetting that Twitter and Facebook are private platforms. They’re not obliged by statute to follow public mandates. That’s why Wikipedia and other publicly owned assets, such as public radio and TV, are so important. Unfortunately, their market share today is a shadow and sliver of an afterthought compared to everything else. We need to revisit the original intentions of some of our media visionaries like [former FCC Chair] Newton Minow and Edward R. Murrow.

C: You talk a lot about universities, libraries and archives having a critical role in producing public knowledge.

PK: Listen, when 60% of Americans believe in angels, 40-50% don’t believe in evolution, and a large group of people believe Democrats are making Jewish space laser pizza babies, you have your work cut out for you. I work at MIT in an office that produces open courseware and runs the most popular dot-edu YouTube channel. We have over 3 million subscribers. But compared to what it could be? We need to put out a lot more [educational content]. I’m writing another book specifically to answer this question. 

I will say that what’s needed is courage from educational leaders to counter so much misinformation. If we don’t speak out now, then when?