How Long Can We Expect the Involution to Last?

The great books effort is an example of the way academia distils culture. I think it's a useful marker if we're going to try to determine where we are in the cycle. History gives us a pretty good idea of when the precycle period occurred, and when things transferred from that to growth. We can say with certainty that this transition happened at least a couple of centuries ago. If there is no status to be gained for originality any more, then cataloguing the originality which has already occurred would seem to be an obvious next step.