Software and Web infrastructure for the Enlightenment of the Digital Age

By Samuel Arbesman

“That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point…” - Thomas Jefferson (sadly, not actually writing about the World Wide Web)

I’ve noticed a recent trend of software and web technologies that recapitulate many of the institutions and ideals of the Enlightenment. This includes everything from coffeehouse culture and the Republic of Letters to new means of scientific dissemination or even new types of educational programs, ones where tech meets the liberal arts (original Twitter thread on this).

This database chronicles some of the categories of Enlightenment institutions and their modern exemplars:

Enlightenment 2.0 Database

Note: Experiment and Roam Research are Lux Capital portfolio companies.

Some Additional Resources:

• “Tools for Thought” by Andy Matuschak and Michael Nielsen (this topic encompasses a kind of Commonplace Books 2.0, but also much more)
• On decentralized science: “A Guide to DeSci, the Latest Web3 Movement” by Sarah Hamburg and "A Guide to Decentralized Biotech” by Jocelynn Pearl
• “We need better tools for online speech” by Jacob O’Bryant
• The work of Slime Mold Time Mold is relevant for rethinking how science can be done, eg. https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2022/05/09/job-posting-reddit-research-czar/
• The Overedge Catalog of non-traditional research organizations
• The Digital Humanism Project
• Some Modern Wisdom Literature

Please send additional suggestions to [email protected] (I’m particularly interested in what an Enlightenment 2.0 version of a library might look like)

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