The Senior Common Room had been temporarily requisitioned by the University’s Strategic Excellence Initiative, a development announced in an email whose subject line read:
“URGENT: Enhancing Excellence Through Enhanced Excellence Enhancement.”
No one had replied.
This, in administrative terms, counted as agreement.
Professor Quillibrace was seated beneath a notice that now read “THIS SPACE OPTIMISED FOR PRODUCTIVITY.” He appeared to be optimising neither his mood nor his compliance.
Miss Elowen Stray was quietly observing the new “Impact Dashboard” that had been installed on a freestanding screen.
Mr Blottisham was attempting to log into it using his library password, which it had already rejected on ethical grounds.
At the head of the room stood the Dean.
He was visibly enthusiastic in the way only someone deeply insulated from the consequences of enthusiasm can be.
“We are entering a new era,” he declared.
Quillibrace did not look up.
“We are always entering a new era,” he said. “It is one of our more persistent habits.”
The Dean ignored this.
“We are introducing a revolutionary system for measuring research impact.”
Blottisham looked intrigued.
“Oh! Citations?”
“Better,” said the Dean. “Engagement.”
Miss Stray tilted her head slightly.
“In what sense?”
The Dean gestured toward the screen, where a swirling diagram of arrows, hearts, and indistinct professional optimism was rotating slowly.
“We will be using an algorithm trained entirely on LinkedIn posts.”
There was a pause.
Somewhere in the corridor, a filing cabinet quietly resigned.
Blottisham looked impressed.
“Oh! So it measures professional influence.”
“Precisely,” said the Dean. “Visibility, networking, thought leadership signals, endorsement density—”
Quillibrace finally looked up.
“My dear colleague,” he said carefully, “you are proposing to evaluate scholarly contribution using a dataset whose primary function is self-description under conditions of mild existential performance anxiety.”
The Dean smiled brightly.
“Exactly!”
Miss Stray spoke softly.
“So the model is trained on people describing their own impact.”
“Yes,” said the Dean.
“And then used to measure actual impact.”
“Yes.”
A silence followed.
Blottisham nodded slowly.
“That seems efficient.”
Quillibrace closed his eyes briefly.
“It is not efficiency,” he said quietly. “It is circularity wearing a name badge.”
The Dean pressed on.
“The algorithm identifies high-impact individuals by detecting signals of influence.”
Blottisham frowned.
“What counts as a signal?”
The Dean consulted his notes.
“Consistent posting. Strategic visibility. Comment engagement. Inspirational phrasing. Use of phrases like ‘excited to announce’.”
Miss Stray looked thoughtful.
“So impact is being inferred from self-promotional linguistic patterns.”
“Yes.”
Quillibrace leaned back slightly.
“And scholarship?”
The Dean waved a hand.
“Oh, that will correlate.”
A pause.
Blottisham looked uncertain.
“But what if someone does important work but doesn’t post about it?”
The Dean smiled kindly.
“Then the algorithm will detect low impact.”
Quillibrace murmured:
“As one would expect.”
Miss Stray tapped her pen gently against her notebook.
“There seems to be a substitution occurring,” she said. “From epistemic evaluation to visibility metrics derived from a specific communicative platform.”
The Dean nodded enthusiastically.
“Yes! Exactly! Modernisation!”
Blottisham brightened.
“So being good at LinkedIn is the same as being good at research.”
“Not the same,” said the Dean. “But strongly predictive.”
Quillibrace opened his eyes.
“My dear Dean,” he said, “you appear to have constructed a system in which the representation of impact has fully replaced the phenomenon of impact.”
The Dean looked pleased.
“Streamlining!”
Miss Stray added gently:
“It may also privilege a particular style of self-presentation as if it were a proxy for epistemic contribution.”
Blottisham frowned.
“So if I write ‘excited to share my groundbreaking thoughts on medieval pottery,’ I get more impact?”
“Potentially,” said the Dean.
Quillibrace sighed.
“Wonderful,” he said softly. “We have finally solved the problem of knowledge by replacing it with enthusiasm about knowledge.”
The room fell quiet.
The impact dashboard pulsed gently, as though awaiting validation from the universe itself.
Blottisham studied it.
“So the algorithm thinks LinkedIn is reality.”
“No,” said Quillibrace.
“It thinks LinkedIn is evidence of reality.”
Miss Stray added:
“Which is not quite the same thing—but in practice may behave as if it is.”
Blottisham sat back.
“That seems dangerous.”
Quillibrace nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “But it is a very legible kind of danger. Administrations tend to prefer those.”
The Dean smiled once more.
“So we are agreed?”
Nobody replied.
The silence was not procedural.
It was epistemic.
And in the absence of further engagement metrics, the algorithm quietly awarded everyone maximum impact.
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