[iDC] Gated Knowledge Communities
john sobol
john at johnsobol.com
Fri Feb 10 11:34:37 EST 2006
On 10-Feb-06, at 10:31 AM, trebor at thing.net wrote:
> But, what are the editors and publishers of these expensive journals
> thinking? --
If you ask me there is a severe epistemological crisis in academia at
present.
On the one hand, the past twenty years of post-modernist infatuation
has resulted in endless discussions about alterity, situatedness,
embodiment, etc. in the social sciences. However, although an enormous
number of professors profess allegiance (or the po-mo version of it) to
discursive fluidity, openness etc., they appear in practice to have
made only the mildest impact on established epistemological norms in
academia. Students still have to write scholarly papers exactly like
they did before teachers started teaching that authoritative linear
narratives could never go uninterrogated. And those essays are still
extremely formally restricted and are of course highly regulated linear
narratives that must be authorized by the mechanics of scholarly
epistemology (citations, bibliographies, MLA style, etc.). And
professors still have to publish their authoritative linear narratives
in authorized restricted-access journals even as the subject of their
critiques is often the fallibility and folly of accepting at face value
hegemonic claims of epistemological authority. Despite all the
progressive theories, it's still about extremely hierarchical and
official certification of knowledge (think marks, fellowships,
peer-review, dissertations, defenses, degrees, etc.) in hyper-literate
academia.
Now, this paradoxical (or hypocritical – depending on your perspective)
situation would likely have continued forever (since the literate forms
of academic discourse have proven invincible to the very critiques that
they claim to express) were it not for an unexpected new player on the
epistemological landscape. Of course I'm referring to digital networks.
Collectively, institutions designed to authenticate knowledge according
to positivist epistemological criteria are facing a growing crisis as a
result of new communication technologies propagating a highly
subversive and increasingly alien epistemological system. If the ways
we exchange knowledge are changing, and if the nature of the knowledge
we exchange changes in response to the tools used to exchange it, and
if those new ways of exchange yield new knowledge cultures based upon
genuine discursive openness and fluidity that dwarfs anything discussed
in an immobile, hierarchical, text-based class, and lastly if students
entering academia are fluent users of those new knowledge systems, then
the 'paradox' of 19th century forms being forced upon 21st century kids
by professors promoting (late) 20th century theories from their ivory
towers will soon begin to turn kids away from the university
altogether. (Sorry for that overlong sentence but you get the point.)
To put it another way, if you can get the info that will answer the
question on your exam by consulting google via your mobile phone, does
it make sense to be punished for cheating when your real skill is the
ability access needed information rapidly?
j
www.johnsobol.com
bluesology • printopolis • digitopia
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