This article considers the affects of neoliberal globalisation and the information technology revolution upon the production and dissemination of knowledge within the university. More broadly, it argues that the nexus between globalisation and computerisation is creating an ‘information ecology’, a growing environment of interconnectivity that has speed and commercialism as its principal dynamics. The paper argues that such an environment is creating a new ‘knowledge epoch’, one that valorises, more than ever before, instrumentalised knowledge over critical forms, and is producing a society that is increasingly unable to think reflexively about the issues and challenges that confront an increasingly complex world.