Peter Kaufman

The Fifth Estate is a book about the sociology of knowledge: what people believe, how they have come to believe it, and the powerful interests which have may have gotten them there. Drawing on science, social science, history, law, and literature, it explores the broken ways in which information circulates around the world, explains how and why bad information travels freely and unregulated, and outlines methods by which, through concerted action, especially by knowledge institutions (universities, libraries, museums, archives, and others, including public broadcasters), societies might more effectively fight this crisis of toxic thinking. One conclusion is that we must no longer treat facts and truths as intellectual property. Much as we did in the 1860s with our attitudes toward serfdom and slavery, we have to engineer the manumission of ideas, so that universities, libraries, museums, and archives—our new fifth estate—can work more effectively to flood the zone with truths.