Ian Mulvany

May 12, 2025

I'm giving a talk next week at publisher speak.

I fed in my sketch notes to GPT to ask it for a title for my talk, and it came up with a really interesting set of options, I'm actually genuinely impressed by these potential titles. I'm not normally into posting pure AI generated content, but these titles do a good job of capturing some of the aspects of my notes. Now I just have to finish writing the talk.

The website for the event is at https://www.kriyadocs.com/publisherspeak 


Agency, Future, and Knowledge Creation



  1. The Shape of What’s to Come: How Today’s Decisions Define Tomorrow’s Knowledge


  2. Publishing the Future: The Agency We Hold in Knowledge Creation


  3. From Letters to Algorithms: What We Choose Now Shapes What We Know Next


  4. The Next Generation of Knowing: Why Publishers Matter More Than Ever


  5. Beyond Impact: Building the Future of Knowledge with Intent


  6. Tending the Roots of Truth: How Infrastructure Becomes Epistemology


  7. Not Just Access: Trust, Identity, and the Coming Knowledge Systems


  8. Context is Our North Star: Rethinking Infrastructure for a Scalable Future


  9. Truth at Scale: Can We Still Trust What We Know?


  10. The Quiet Power of Infrastructure: How Publishers Can Shape What’s Real





Historical and Philosophical Anchoring



  1. Twelve Generations In: Reclaiming the Irrational Engine of Science


  2. The Knowledge Machine and the Climber’s Fall: What We Owe the Next Step


  3. From Newton to Networks: What We’ve Been Building and What Comes Next


  4. Spiky Spheres and Smooth Lies: Why Scientific Knowledge Must Stay Hard


  5. The World Is All That Is the Case—And Publishers Help Define the Case





Challenge and Call to Action



  1. What Are We Really Doing? Publishing as a System of Collective Foresight


  2. The Hard Edge of the Universe Is a Gift: Why We Must Take It Seriously


  3. What Matters Now: Coordination, Identity, and the Fragility of Knowing


  4. Context Engines and the Future of Credibility


  5. You Have Agency: The Future of Knowledge Needs You


About Ian Mulvany

Hi, I'm Ian - I work on academic publishing systems. You can find out more about me at mulvany.net. I'm always interested in engaging with folk on these topics, if you have made your way here don't hesitate to reach out if there is anything you want to share, discuss, or ask for help with!