The Coming Epoch of Epistemic Consolidation:

This paper examines the emerging phenomenon of epistemic consolidation in an era where AI systems increasingly mediate access to knowledge. As the open web deteriorates through link rot, platform collapse, and the disappearance of independent archives, AI models rely more heavily on structured, institutionally anchored sources such as DOI‑indexed publications, academic repositories, and government databases. This infrastructural shift narrows the range of perspectives that remain visible or retrievable, not through censorship or ideological enforcement, but through the technical requirements of machine‑legibility and metadata stability. The paper analyzes how this dynamic privileges institutional narratives, marginalizes independent or long‑tail knowledge, and amplifies the opacity of existing power structures. It argues that the central challenge of the coming decade is not resisting overt control, but preserving epistemic plurality in a knowledge ecosystem increasingly shaped by AI’s structural dependencies and interpretive defaults.