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  "path": "/links/the-printing-press-democratized-knowledge-a-slogans-masquerading-as-history",
  "publishedAt": "2026-03-19T04:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "https://jonathanstephens.us",
  "tags": [
    "Printing Press",
    "Democracy",
    "Knowledge",
    "Criticism",
    "Paper",
    "Reading",
    "Books",
    "Ai",
    "Complexity",
    "Naming",
    "Language"
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  "textContent": "> Finally, to knowledge. It's ridiculous that I should try to dispatch the complexity of what \"knowledge\" is in three sentences, which is about the length of a paragraph that people are willing to stick with on a screen. I will simply say here that equating words pressed on to paper with knowledge both restricts what knowledge itself is and the vast number of channels by which humanity has acquired it over millennia (I, for one, didn't learn how to rollerblade by being taught from words pressed on paper), at the same time that it oversells what words on paper are (sure, everything is \"knowledge,\" but when people use that word, they're generally dressing up whatever it is they're calling \"knowledge\" and I can assure you that a lot of what the printing press printed at scale was bullshit).\n>\n> No, I don't hate the printing press. What I object to is the use of slogans based on fairy tales. But \"the printing press democratized knowledge\" is not just a fairy tale; when you actually think about the words being used next to one another, they don't make the sense they are purported to make.\n>\n> Yes, it’s important to dispute on its own terms that “AI” will achieve all the glorious things its boosters promise. But it’s also important to understand that the very historical example that is cited as proof by means of the precedent it set is itself a lie, largely because it makes no damned sense.",
  "title": "\"The Printing Press Democratized Knowledge\": When Slogans Masquerade as History"
}