[Fis] Fwd: Scientific publication: Response

[Mark Johnson]

Dear FIS Colleagues,

Thank you very much for your comments. I've made a video response
which can be found here: https://youtu.be/r8T2ssGAius

The video mostly concerns Loet's comment about selection and
codification and references Sergej's point about "shared objects" (and
its relation to activity theory). Shared objects are extremely
important, but Francisco is right - Loet's point about codification
goes the heart of the matter.

In responding to Loet (and to some extent Sergej) I draw attention to
the nature of teaching and its distinction with communication. This
means standing back from Luhmann's binary model of communication,
which he saw as a contingency-reduction process in the selection of
meaning. Instead I suggest looking at communication as a process of
the revealing and coordination of constraints. In Loet's work, I think
this is probably the same as redundancy... Both Ashby and Von Foerster
are powerful reference points for a deeper understanding - notably Von
Foerster's paper "On self organising systems and their environments"
(see http://e1020.pbworks.com/f/fulltext.pdf) and Ashby's late work on
"constraint analysis" which was somewhat obscured in the hype around
second-order cybernetics. Ashby's notebooks are the best place to
start: http://www.rossashby.info/journal/index/index.html#constraint -
he later called this "cylindrance".

I agree with Moises about new ways of thinking about accrediting
intellectual contributions. Uber is very interesting .... but it
remains centralized (with a company making huge profits in
California). What if it was peer-to-peer, or the record of
contributions was 'ownerless'. There is a lot of work going on at the
moment with regard to 'decentralise the web' (see
http://www.wired.co.uk/article/tim-berners-lee-reclaim-the-web). I
think this provides an valuable indicator of where we might look for
richer mechanisms of ascribing credit for intellectual work. I'm not
sure about Berners-Lee's Linked Data, but maybe http://ipfs.io has
potential. I think these technologies present the best chance of
transforming our market-oriented logic - so, Joseph, there is hope!

As for the history, I'm no historian unfortunately... but we could do
with some proper historical analysis of scientific communication,
status and power over the centuries. The parallels between the 16/17
centuries and our own time are compelling. I predict that our
universities will one day be transformed in their approach to
education to as great an extent that the Cambridge curriculum which
Bacon so harshly criticised in 1605 (The advancement of Learning -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Advancement_of_Learning) was
transformed by 1700.

I work for a medical faculty in Liverpool, and today I am at the Royal
College of Physicians in London, which was founded in 1518 (see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_College_of_Physicians) They have
an extraordinary archive here, which raises more questions about how
scientists before the Royal Society communicated with one another. We
ought to get a better grip of the historical shift that occurred in
the 1660s so that we have a better understanding of what kind of shift
to expect in the years to come. As a side comment, I recommend looking
at T.S. Eliot's analysis of the transformation that occurred in poetry
in the same period - what he called a "dissociation of sensibility".

Best wishes and many thanks for your comments,

Mark

--
Dr. Mark William Johnson
Institute of Learning and Teaching
Faculty of Health and Life Sciences
University of Liverpool

Phone: 07786 064505
Email: johnsonmwj1 at gmail.com
Blog: http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.com


-- 
Dr. Mark William Johnson
Institute of Learning and Teaching
Faculty of Health and Life Sciences
University of Liverpool

Visiting Professor
Far Eastern Federal University, Russia

Phone: 07786 064505
Email: johnsonmwj1 at gmail.com
Blog: http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.com