Post-Gutenberg Galaxy: The Fourth Revolution in the Means of Production of Knowledge

There have been three revolutions in the history of human thought, and we are on the threshold of a fourth. The first took place hundreds of thousands of years ago when language first emerged in hominid evolution and the members of our species became inclined--in response to some adaptive pressures whose nature is still just the subject of vague conjecture [1]--to trade amongst themselves in propositions that had truth value. There is no question but that this change was revolutionary, because we thereby became the first--and so far the only--species able and willing to describe and explain the world we live in. It remains a mystery--to me at any rate--why our anthropoid cousins, the apes, who certainly seem smart enough, do not share this inclination of ours. At any rate, this divergence between our two respective species was a milestone in human communication and cognition, making it possible for culture to develop and be passed on by oral tradition.