The More Things Change...

This is the Social History of Knowledge’s real value: as with any history, we are better-equipped to see continuity in our surroundings, which tempers our over-enthused or doomsayer reactions with an appropriate amount of perspective. Perhaps Chapple might have augmented her study by reviewing the literature on mechanics’ institutes from the Industrial Revolution; maybe van Dijk’s conclusions about the elites in a networked society would have been different if he had looked at the problem through a postcolonial lens. Although Burke says little of Wikipedia or the rest of the Internet, his book makes clear that he doesn’t need to--it’s all been said before.