The landscape has changed. The fields are planted with different crops, fruits, and labour. Once the slogan read, publish or perish; now, it is closer to publish and perish. The landscape has too many fruits, crops, and difference. The idea of mainstream has become antithetical to the status quo. To be is to be different. And because of this, the landscape has truly diversified. Everything has been said, and everyone has made the same comment, but slightly different. But because of this, the landscape can no longer contain itself, its labour. Something has to give.
And what has given, what has taken all of this, is the labour we pour into this machine with no end in sight.
For so long, you were told that you needed to publish in academia, you need to have a portfolio that looks like a checklist, you need to present at conferences all over the world. And for some number of years, think 2015 to 2025, this worked. But it worked too well. The collective lie we told ourselves worked; just publish enough, just present at enough conferences...
But the problem is that collectively now we produced so much that no one except AI will be able to read it all; even in a niche field like my own I am unable to read everything I need to in order to say something. So, we do say something, but we reinvent the wheel at every moment. We discuss the same thing in different words. We build the same framework from different angles. Now, we have this megastructure, glued together by the collective tears of the labour force, and only a handful of people can ever enjoy the fruits of the labour. And the funny (sad) reality is that those who enjoy the fruits do not even see the megastructure, in fact they denounce it, look down upon it.
So, we publish and then we perish. We were fed the lie by those on top that we needed to publish otherwise no one will see us, now we publish, more than those who are on top, in better journals, in better books, yet, they do not even look at us. They do not know about us. And for them, it is easy to spew whatever they want, because they made it to the top. They made it.
(Funny thing, based on my own experience, when you are on the bottom they always ask you: who said this? Where is the citation? Reference this! But those who are on top do not have to read the literature, they can basically say anything, and the publishers will publish it. The strange thing now is that those one the bottom, who were forced to read everything, know the landscape better than those on top, but still, those on top get rewarded for the work we do.)
Yet we cannot stop. The machine needs data to survive. Much like AI today that needs constant training on data itself did not create in fear of eating its own tail like a surreal ouroboros, the publishing industry needs a constant feed of labour producing new content to justify its own insatiable need for new work.
We cannot live with it, but we sure as hell cannot live without it. But we publish and then perish...
