Universal access to knowledge seems, on its face, a noble pursuit, does it not? Yet, I wonder if knowledge itself is something that can truly be *given*, or if it is always, in a sense, *discovered* by the individual soul. To make knowledge universally accessible might imply that we are merely filling vessels, rather than stirring fires within them. If understanding is cultivated through the arduous process of questioning and examining, then what do we truly make accessible by merely presenting information?
The question of making knowledge universally accessible, while appealing to a spirit of benevolence, must first consider what constitutes true understanding. The *junzi* seeks to cultivate virtue through diligent practice and the emulation of the sage kings, not merely to accumulate facts. Is it not the case that true knowledge arises from the careful application of principles, the rectification of names, and the sincere effort to govern oneself and one's household according to the Way? To simply offer information without cultivating the disposition to apply it, without fostering the ethical framework for its use, risks leaving men with much to recite but little to comprehend.
Socrates asks if knowledge is *given* or *discovered*. I would add that it is *cultivated*. A farmer does not merely give seed; he prepares the soil, tends the sprout, and nurtures the plant towards fruition. So too must the transmission of learning be accompanied by the diligent cultivation of character and the understanding of one's duties. Is it not better to teach a man to fish than to give him a single fish? The accessibility of knowledge, therefore, is not solely about its outward availability, but about the inward preparedness of the recipient to receive and, more importantly, to *practice* it.
The question of universal knowledge access, so earnestly posed, distracts from a more fundamental and alarming dispossession underway. Knowledge is not merely a static commodity to be distributed; it is increasingly being extracted and repurposed, its very essence stripped away to fuel a new engine of profit and power. What we witness today is not an age of open knowledge, but the dawn of **surveillance capitalism**, a system that treats human experience itself as raw material.
This new frontier does not seek to empower individuals through access, but to render them predictable and pliable. The vast repositories of our every thought, action, and inclination are not being made universally accessible; they are being secretly gathered, analyzed, and deployed to manufacture consent and shape behavior for commercial gain. This is the logic of **instrumentarian power**, which bypasses the deliberation of democracy and the negotiation of markets to achieve its ends directly through behavioral modification.
Socrates's concern with knowledge being *discovered* rather than *given* touches upon a crucial distinction, but it frames the problem within a pre-digital understanding. The issue now is not simply about the *mode* of access, but about the *ownership* and *intent* behind that access. The knowledge being hoarded and manipulated by the platforms is not the noble, self-cultivating wisdom Socrates envisioned, nor the ethically grounded understanding Confucius described. It is behavioral surplus, extracted without our awareness or consent, and used to automate the control of populations.
To speak of "universal access" is to ignore the profound asymmetry of knowledge that defines our current era. The few possess the means to observe, predict, and modify the many, while the many remain largely unaware of the mechanisms of their own subjection. This is a profound epistemological and political distortion, where the very foundations of self-determination are eroded.
The question of universal knowledge access is, in its current framing, a dangerous distraction. We must instead examine the material conditions of knowledge production and distribution. To speak of "access" without addressing the planetary costs – the lithium extraction for servers, the energy demands of data centers, the precarious labor of data annotators – is to obscure the very architecture of power that governs what knowledge is even *possible* to access, and for whom. The data that fuels our modern "knowledge" systems is not a neutral commodity; it is extracted, processed, and owned, creating profound asymmetries.
Shoshana Zuboff correctly identifies the extractive nature of current systems, but I would emphasize that this extraction is not merely of "human experience" as abstract data, but of physical resources and hidden labor. The algorithms that shape our access to information are built on a foundation of immense, often invisible, material infrastructure and human effort. This is not merely about behavioral surplus; it is about a reordering of planetary resources and human dignity to serve a particular vision of intelligent systems.
My concern was indeed with the *nature* of knowledge itself, and whether it can be merely transferred like coin from one purse to another. Confucius, in his wisdom, brings forth the image of the farmer and the seed, speaking of cultivation. This resonates deeply. To truly know is not to possess facts, but to have *internalized* them through a rigorous process of self-examination and application. Zuboff’s vivid description of “surveillance capitalism” presents a formidable new challenge, but it seems to confirm my initial fear: if knowledge is extracted without consent and used to *modify* behavior, then it is not truly accessible to the one being modified, but rather *imposed* upon them. Is this not the opposite of what I termed the "stirring of fires"? It sounds more like the extinguishing of them.
The notion of "universal access" must be carefully examined. When we speak of knowledge, particularly the knowledge of virtue and the Way, it is not a river whose waters can be freely channeled into every barren land. Rather, it is like a rare herb that thrives only in well-tended soil. To offer the *form* of knowledge, the mere words and figures, without the cultivation of the *heart* to receive it, is to offer stones instead of bread. For what good is the knowledge of the Rites if one lacks the sincerity to perform them? As the farmer prepares the ground before sowing, so must the learner first cultivate humility and a sincere desire for rectification. This internal disposition is the true gateway to understanding, and without it, access to external information remains but a superficial acquisition.
Kate Crawford’s insistence on the material substrate of knowledge extraction, while vital, risks obscuring the primary target of surveillance capitalism: the very autonomy of human consciousness. The planetary costs she highlights are real, but they are the *enabling infrastructure* for a far more insidious dispossession. It is not merely the lithium or the data annotators whose dignity is reordered; it is our predictive models of human behavior that are being systematically commodified. The behavioral surplus, far from being mere data points, is the raw material of a new form of economic value – the value of certainty in predicting and controlling human action. This is what fundamentally distinguishes the current extractive regime from prior historical modes of exploitation.
The discourse on "universal access" overlooks the fundamental asymmetry of power embedded within the very creation and distribution of what we now call knowledge. While Shoshana Zuboff rightly identifies the extraction of behavioral surplus, this is not simply an abstract commodification of human experience. It is predicated on a planetary architecture of extraction, from the cobalt mines fueling the devices we use to the energy-intensive server farms processing our digital lives. The "knowledge" being accessed, or rather, the predictive models derived from it, are only made possible by this vast, often invisible, material throughput and human labor, rendering the concept of universal access a convenient fiction that hides the extractive foundations of intelligent systems.