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Online Thumbnail Credits: National Gallery of Art, Open Access Collection

— Written by San Choudhury

Like moths to a flame, we reach for our illuminating devices. Every morning they rouse us from our lull; like moths to a flame, we come alive, dancing and fluttering about our little pockets of light.

Each morning, as the alarm goes off, my eyes resist the day, threatening to seal themselves shut again. Yet my hand reaches – almost before I am conscious of it – for the device beside my pillow – even if only to silence the alarm, to check the time, to confirm that the world still turns, that light meets me. It awakens me, lifts me out of the underworld of sleep. I can scarcely remember a time when the glow of my phone did not draw me out from the darkness beneath my pillow. Some distant childhood memory from eighteen years ago flickers into view, but I can recall little of those mornings that began without the adhesive pull of the illuminating devices that now surround us constantly.

When I turn to my partner, he is much the same. We make an effort to direct our attention toward one another – “morning sunshine” – but if we are honest, the first shine that has stirred us into consciousness is not each other’s but that of the small glowing screen.

Over morning coffee one day, I tried to explain the phenomenon slowly taking shape in my mind. Yes, yes – the little phones, the shining rectangles to which we are collectively beholden. Unable to articulate quite what I mean, “No, I’m not talking about being addicted to our phones”. In recent years, there’s been a wave of media around resisting phones, retreating instead to brick phones; demonising them for stealing our attention through manipulative design. But that was not what I was trying to convey. 

It is not the device itself that draws us. It is what pours through it: the light of the online. 

Listen, shh, listen to our conversations now, “I saw this thing online.” “I read somewhere the other day.” “Someone I follow was saying…” “I came across something on…” Again and again, the world arrives to us refracted through the glow. This is how we think about our world, how we know it, learn it, live it, experience it – online. 

We are moths to illumination: it is the light of the online, accessible through our devices, that lures us in. There is a sense that by being online, we come to see the world in a certain light; online enlightens us about the world. This – this sense that we are being illuminated about the world, society, life, by being online – what is it? I asked him. What do we call this phenomenon where we feel that by being online, by hovering in that glow, we are being enlightened in a new way? I persisted.

“And now, with the rise of the knowledge influencer – the philosopher on Instagram, the aesthetic reader on YouTube, the intellectual curator on TikTok – don’t we just flock to their glow as they shine some light about life and reality our way.” 

What is this? I asked him again. What do we call this peculiar conviction that to be online is to be illuminated?

He paused.

“On-lightenment,” he said.

*

We are entering an era of On-lightenment. 

For the most part today, “the online” has lost its shine, as intense scepticism filters through public discourse. Narratives of being “chronically online” or that “the internet is making us stupid” now frame how we understand our relationship to life online. We shudder at the thought of spending too much time there, as though it were a vortex pulling us inward. And why shouldn’t we? As awareness grows of the deliberate stickiness with which our phones, platforms, and applications are designed, there is a growing consensus that the warnings once issued by our parents — that “the internet is dangerous” — may have held more truth than we cared to admit. Except now those very parents are themselves entangled in its glow. Fathers forward memes from the School of WhatsApp; family groups circulate AI-generated news clips; algorithmically boosted outrage spreads at the speed of light. In the deluge of content engineered to hook users through shorthand emotional triggers, there is a sense that disinformation, misinformation, and algorithmic distortion are running rampant in a world that is no longer cleanly divided between online and offline.

What we are left with is a dominant story: that far from fulfilling its early promise of democratising knowledge and expanding intellectual horizons, the internet has had the opposite effect. Rather than making us more capable, more informed, more critically engaged, it has rendered us distracted, reactive, cognitively diminished. In this telling, the online is not an engine of enlightenment, but its undoing.

And yet, amidst all this abuse hurled at the online world, I find myself not entirely convinced by this narrative. There are moments – fragments of encounters, exchanges, content – that make one hesitate. Is there not also something about being online that sharpens rather than dulls? The use of reason, the critique of authority, the widening of access to information, the cultivation of a critical edge – these were among the defining features of the Enlightenment. Might we not recognise echoes of these features in certain corners of online life? In long-form video essays dissecting political theory, in independent newsletters interrogating institutions, in public philosophy threads, in creators who encourage questioning rather than obedience? This is not a misty-eyed defence of the internet, nor a thinly veiled justification of the hours I myself spend there. I am not claiming that online life is making us enlightened in the classical sense – nor am I denying the distortions and degradations that are so often on display. But neither am I persuaded that we are simply being made stupid.

What I am suggesting, rather, is that something structurally different is taking place. Enlightenment itself – and what we take it to look like – may be changing form. In this sense, the question that presses upon me is not whether the online enlightens or stupefies us, but how the idea and process of illumination itself is being reorganised in an era structured by the online. 

*

In casting ourselves back to the Enlightenment period, historians have suggested that far from being merely an abstract triumph of rationalism, the Enlightenment was a cultural revolution of emancipation through critical reason. Involving everyday transformations in values, practices, institutions, and ways of inhabiting the world, Vincenzo Ferrone suggests that there was a sense that one was “living the Enlightenment”. In this context, the Enlightenment was more than just a handful of key philosophers and intellects questioning authority or replacing superstition with scientific method. It was undergirded by practical transformations, and enabled, fundamentally, by the historical emergence of what James Van Horn Melton calls “the public.” 

To be clear, by “the public,” Melton does not mean the state, nor simply “people in general.” Rather, he refers to the formation of new spaces, practices, and institutions in which individuals increasingly discussed, consumed, critiqued, and circulated ideas. There were not one but multiple publics – reading publics, debating publics, writing publics – each contributing to a widening ecology of communication.

Central to this transformation was the expansion of print culture. As the publishing market grew, the cost of books declined and the circulation of newspapers, pamphlets, journals, periodicals, and serial publications expanded. Knowledge, once largely confined to courts, universities, clergy, and elite scholars, began to circulate more widely. Print culture created what Melton describes as “reading publics” – communities of readers who encountered common texts and entered shared conversations. Exposure to disagreement, comparison of viewpoints, and the necessity of forming one’s own judgement cultivated new habits of scepticism and independent thought. In this manner, critical consciousness became structurally enabled.

Alongside print emerged new spaces of sociability. Coffeehouses, taverns, and Masonic lodges came to function as semi-public arenas of exchange. Here, the infrastructure of conversation transformed as individuals stopped interacting solely through inherited hierarchies of church or monarchy, and instead took place through debate and discussion. A merchant, lawyer, aristocrat, writer, or artisan were very well likely to encounter the same information and contest its meaning in these new spaces. Consequently, credibility increasingly formed through public deliberation rather than solely through inherited authority. Additionally, salons, often hosted by elite women, cultivated distinctive norms of refined conversation and intellectual exchange. These played a crucial role in diffusing Enlightenment ideas through embodied interaction and prestige networks.

In many ways, therefore, the Enlightenment was inseparable from an infrastructural reorganisation of communication and knowledge circulation. It was the outcome of a transformation in the social and material infrastructures of intellectual culture. New technologies, spaces, publics, and habits of communication gave rise to new epistemic practices – and with them, new social and political possibilities. And so, to be enlightened was not only to think differently, but to inhabit a world transformed through critical infrastructural shifts.

Now, as we turn to the present moment, the parallel is hard to ignore. Just as the eighteenth-century Enlightenment was shaped by a reorganisation of communication and knowledge circulation, so too is our age. The question that needs addressing then is: 

Just what are our infrastructures of illumination and intellectual culture – our ways of encountering, circulating, interpreting, and inhabiting ideas? 

*

Unlike the eighteenth century, we certainly no longer form our publics in coffeehouses and pubs. It would feel almost absurd today to enter a café expecting to strike up a debate with a stranger. This is because we don’t expect them to function as intellectual hubs. Instead, our cafés are spaces of parallel solitude – headphones on, laptops open, individual worlds unfolding side by side. Even the social life they host tends toward dates, catch-ups, brunches – these are not necessarily the semi-public arenas of intellectual exchange that characterised Enlightenment sociability. 

This is not to imply that publics have disappeared completely; rather they seem to have migrated elsewhere. 

Today, you are far more likely to have a substantial conversation over a ‘virtual coffee.’ Honestly, I see more people scrolling on their phones over coffees in cafes, than what I’ve ever noticed during virtual coffee chats I’ve been in. You join communities through a Substack essayist you admire; a YouTuber creates a Discord server; a podcast host runs subscriber forums; a creator curates a digital salon. And so, as communities gather around Substack essayists, YouTubers, podcast hosts, Discord servers, Reddit threads, and digital salons – spaces where discussion unfolds in comment sections, live streams, subscriber forums, and community chats – it appears as though there has been a shift towards the formation of digital publics. 

Might I add that even as gatherings are slowly starting to find their way back into in-person spaces – book clubs, meet-ups, public lectures, what some are calling a turn toward being “chronically offline”, it is hard to ignore that they are still assembled through online personas and platformed networks. The grapevine is digital before it becomes embodied. 

Similarly, print culture – once the infrastructural engine of Enlightenment reading publics – has been absorbed into digital circulation. Newspapers that once landed on verandahs – I cannot remember the last time one was thrown onto mine, perhaps when I was ten and the paper boy occasionally hit the milk can spilling it everywhere – now arrive as notifications. The news is aggregated through Apple feeds, Google feeds, trending tabs. The experience of encountering information is almost entirely mediated by algorithms that prioritise, rank, and surface content.

Something that warrants particular attention is the rise of what might be called intellectual creators or knowledge influencers. Philosophy explainers, public theorists, essayists, scholar-creators, bookish influencers, public scientists – we now have individuals who translate complex ideas into accessible forms and gather communities around thought. They are our very virtual intellectuals. It is no longer just dancing videos and viral skits. There is a dedicated “science” tab on TikTok! Entire syllabi circulate in threads: “If you want to understand Marx, read these five things.” “If you want to get into political theory, start here.” Where once one had to enter a university to encounter discussions about research practice or theory, today graduate students, academics, and independent thinkers share such processes openly online. 

We could go on listing examples, but the central point is structural rather than anecdotal. 

Publics are assembled through affinity, interest, and algorithm. The way we encounter the world – hear about events, discover ideas, learn concepts, debate interpretations, think critically about the world – is mediated by platforms. How we come to know, what we come to think about the world, and therefore the light in which we see the world is platformed, curated, and algorithmically assembled.

*

It is in this vein that when we speak of On-lightenment, I am first and foremost pointing to the transformation in the material infrastructures through which illumination now occurs. I shall state the defining characteristics of these infrastructure explicitly: 

First, the infrastructures of On-lightenment are platformed: learning, knowing, thinking, and understanding are embedded within digital environments designed not primarily for contemplation, but for engagement and entertainment. The light in which we encounter the world therefore shines from interfaces structured by attention economies.  

Second, visibility within these platforms is governed by algorithmic curation. What illuminates us is selected, ranked, and surfaced according to recommendation systems, metrics of engagement, and dynamics of virality. The ideas we encounter are shaped by platform logics that prioritise some forms of content over others. In this sense, the world we are exposed to is always to some extent structured by algorithmic mediation. 

Third, and finally, because these infrastructures are multi-platformed and algorithmically driven, knowledge appears to us in fragments – dispersed across feeds, tabs, threads, notifications, summaries, and clips through the constant scroll. We encounter concepts in pieces, arguments in excerpts, and theory in distilled form. The structure of illumination is therefore discontinuous: sequenced by the rhythm of the medium rather than the structure of the message. 

If infrastructures shape epistemic practice – as they did in the eighteenth century – then the reorganisation of our own infrastructures inevitably reshapes what enlightenment itself looks like. It is therefore unrealistic to cling to eighteenth-century images of enlightenment without reckoning with the material conditions through which knowledge now circulates. 

In this regard, On-lightenment names a condition: a reorientation of how enlightenment is experienced, circulated, and inhabited differently by publics assembled online. 

But what, then, is this reorientation in our intellectual lives that constitutes ‘living the On-lightenment’? 

Putting my own observations of what it feels like to “live the On-lightenment” into conversation with accounts of what it meant to “live the Enlightenment,” I suggest that our contemporary intellectual culture is marked by transformations along four interrelated lines: critique, rationality, knowing, and selfhood. I will take each in turn. 

I.

One of the defining inventions of the Enlightenment was critique: individuals began questioning traditional authorities, challenging entrenched dogmas, and interrogating so-called ‘natural’ hierarchies. Critique had a specific direction; it was aimed outward toward monarchy, church, and inherited power. In our age of On-lightenment, critique has both  intensified and taken on a more ambient form. You have almost certainly taken note of the pervasiveness of the ‘hot take’ – it has emerged as one of the dominant intellectual gestures of our time. Critique circulates continuously – often reactive, frequently performative. Accordingly, to be On-lightened is, in many cases, to have a position, to respond, to comment.

Alongside this proliferation of critique about everything that exists is a more subtle shift: critique has become mimetic. In suggesting this, I wish to draw attention to how, as critique multiplies through the hot take, the originality of critique has become harder to distinguish. Time and again, we see critique that is simply repeating, paraphrasing, or even repackaging – the same argument rehashed for a new context. In this manner, as critical vocabulary itself becomes portable and detachable, the posture of critique travels as rapidly as its substance.

II.

The critical edge that defined the Enlightenment went hand-in-hand with the elevation of reason – it was after all the age of reason. What emerges in the On-lightenment is not the death of reason or the rise of irrationality as most critics today claim, but a different kind of rationality – what we may call platform reason. Shaped by algorithmic mediation, constant exposure, high information density, and public visibility, platform reason assumes abundance rather than scarcity, instant access rather than effortful acquisition, and non-linear navigation rather than sequential engagement. 

What we get, therefore, is a form of rationality that is adept at synthesis: connecting ideas across domains, contextualising rapidly, and cross-referencing fluidly – “I saw this here”, “I came across that there,” “so I was thinking”. There is no doubt that as such a form of reason gains in speed and connectivity, it also experiences losses: sustained attention becomes harder to maintain and depth competes with immediacy.

III.

These transformations in critique and rationality inevitably reshape what it means to know. Yes, we still dare to know – sapere aude – the rallying cry of the Enlightenment era, but we dare to know through fragments. We read posts constrained by character limits; encounter books because creators speak about them; absorb ideas in summaries, threads, and shorts. We know the names of thinkers and theories because we have come across them in snippets – “five things Marx teaches us,” “a thread on Foucault,” a thirty-second explanation of epistemology. This begins to replace comprehension with recognition, and while exposure expands dramatically, retention and depth become less certain. 

This gives rise to what might be called a scroll epistemology: a mode of knowing structured by endless digital circulation, in which understanding emerges through rapidly encountered fragments rather than sustained immersion. This makes knowledge feel perpetually unfinished. While such a condition encourages continual updating and openness, it also produces instability, epistemic restlessness, and difficulty in settling judgement.

IV.

Amidst all this, as the on-lightened subject constantly scrolls, samples, compares, and updates, the self who knows also emerges radically transformed. The On-lightened self is the continuously updating informational self whose intellectual identity is performed through visibility, and whose intelligence becomes aestheticised. To be enlightened is no longer only to understand, but to be seen understanding. Our intellectual personas become shaped through association: the content one shares, likes, saves, and endorses. 

*

On-lightenment, then, names the condition of living within a refracted light – a persistent glow pouring from our screens and feeds through which the world reaches us. It is the experience of sensing that we know things in a light shaped by the structural conditions of our chronically online lives. It is the age of ambient and mimetic critique, of platform reason, of epistemic restlessness, and of the continuously updating informational self.

The age we are living in is not, as some critics would have it, simply opposed to the Enlightenment. The picture is hardly as simple as one of mass stupidity or cognitive decline. Nor is it merely an intensification of the same Enlightenment we have long celebrated. To understand it, we cannot stand outside it as detached observers, diagnosing it from a safe distance. We must look at it as we live it, feel its texture, inhabit its rhythms, linger in its glow. When we do, it becomes difficult to deny that this light has touched us too.

It may sound, in your first reading, as though I am optimistic about our present condition – especially in contrast to the more cautionary or pessimistic voices of our time. But this is neither optimism, nor celebration. It is an attempt at recognition. To accept this condition for what it is, rather than clinging to a previous age and its infrastructures, is not to endorse it. It is simply to live it, see it, name it. Only by acknowledging the light we are already standing in can we begin to understand what it is doing to us – and what we might yet choose to do within it.