The document discusses how scholarly communication and research is returning to patterns seen in the 17th-18th centuries. Specifically, it notes that with digital technologies there is now less reliance on traditional publishers and journals as gatekeepers and more self-publication. Researchers are connecting in less formal ways, similar to the correspondence of philosophers like Descartes and Leibniz. While this resembles earlier eras, the scale is much larger today due to greater participation online. Tools are still developing to help navigate the vast information now available.

1. Perspectives 35
ment with these new technologies involves creating the new writing and
indeed, establishing the new forms of educational discourse.
References
Holson, L. M. (2010). Tell-all generation learns to keep things offline. New York Times,
May 8. Retrieved June 12, 2010 from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/
fashion/09privacy.html?th&emc=th
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New Bottles?. Neohelicon: Acta Comparationis Litterarum Universarum 36, 439-50.
Landow, G. P. (2001). Hypertext 3.0: Critical theory and technology in an age of global-
ization. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Landow, G. P. (2003). The paradigm is more important than the purchase: edu-
cational innovation and hypertext theory. Innovation, 35-64. A. Morrison, G.
Liestøl, and T. Rasmussen (Eds.). Cambridge: MIT Press.
Nadin, M. (1997). The civilization of illiteracy. Dresden, Germany: Dresden Uni-
versity Press.
Ahead to the Past:
Scholarly Communication Returns to the Seventeenth Century
DAVID KOLB
Bates College
Thinking and research and writing have always depended upon technology
for production and communication, from clay tablets to pencils to the Inter-
net. Seen from this perspective, the key inventions might be the alphabet,
paper, printing, the typewriter, and digital media. When there are large
changes in the technology for recording and communicating thoughts, there
are also changes in the institutions of research and writing. We are in the
midst of one of those revolutions now, and our technologies for research
and scholarly communication are in flux, as older institutions get shaky and
the shape of new institutions remains obscure. In many ways, our situation
today resembles the more informal networks of the 1600s and 1700s rather
than the professionalized processes that were dominant in the 20th century.

2. 36 Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy
If you look at the writings of philosophers in the 1600s and 1700s, such
as Descartes and Leibniz, you will see that their writing was a mix of let-
ters, self-published books, and a few articles. In the century and a half
spanned by Descartes and Leibniz, both of them had very active corre-
spondence, especially Leibniz, whose many interests and travels led him to
maintain wide professional connections. When Descartes wished to gather
comments on his Meditations, he was able to solicit objections from most of
the major philosophers in Europe, and he published them along with his
responses. There was potential for Descartes to become the connector for
the new philosophy, but he was too private a person to take on such a pub-
lic role. Instead, his friend Fr. Marin Mersenne did much of the work of
connecting Descartes to other thinkers. Leibniz, on the other hand, was
always out in public; he carried on spirited correspondence with many peo-
ple. But it was another man who helped set up a new method of connection
that included letters and published articles. That man was Henry Olden-
burg, who was not so much a researcher as a connector and linker who kept
researchers in contact with one another. A German, Oldenburg lived in
London from 1652 on, and he founded and edited the first-ever scientific
periodical in Europe, Philosophical Transactions. Oldenburg was also secre-
tary to the British Royal Society, itself a new creation, and he acted as a
clearinghouse for the science of his day. Scientists began to be linked to-
gether in a network that favored those who had access to its relatively rapid
means of communication and debate.
In the 19th century, the situation began to change again. There was no
new writing technology, but new social arrangements developed. More and
more, especially in Germany, research and writing was published in large
books and in journals. Journals in philosophy and science began to multi-
ply; many of them did not last very long, but they provided an outlet for
particular schools of thought that came and went. Universities gradually
played a larger role as centers of research and communication. They be-
came centers of research in more precisely defined academic disciplines,
which were institutionalized in the newly potent universities. In the 1600s
and 1700s, none of the important philosophers worked at universities. In
the 1800s, most influential European philosophers were associated with the
academy, although there were important exceptions such as Marx and
Kierkegaard, who never were connected with a university, and Schopen-
hauer and Nietzsche, who both left the academy. It is significant, though,
that while they were able to publish, these academic exiles influenced the
professional discipline of philosophy only long after their deaths. In Eng-
land, important non-university philosophers such as Bentham and the Mills
had more influence throughout the 1800s.

3. Perspectives 37
Now the scene is changing again. If I published a book or article, others
might review it, discuss it in their books and articles, disagree, agree, qual-
ify, and take up other attitudes or discussions. What is new is that all these
items, which once would have had to be searched for laboriously in a li-
brary, can now be found linked together on the Web. These links might
include blog entries, articles, Web journals, Facebook comments, biblio-
graphical references to libraries and print items, and even email messages
that have been archived in some accessible fashion. What is also new is that
no one has to maintain the list of these contributions to the discussion. An
Internet search can index this scattered archive, and internal links take the
reader through portions of it. The whole linked discussion, which includes
both formal and informal publication, has become available in a new way as
a unit, rather than as hidden trails to be followed in libraries. This makes for
a much richer field of discourse.
We can no longer assume that all of the work being done on any particu-
lar issue will be gathered into printed books and journals. Thus, in many
ways, we are returning to the patterns of the days of Leibniz and Olden-
burg in the 17th and 18th centuries. In those days, there was far more self-
publication, fewer gatekeepers, and more reliance on well-connected people
like Oldenburg, who made references and pointed people to things they
should read and individuals they should correspond with. Instead of gate-
keepers there were native guides through the jungle. Of course, there were
concerns about the qualifications of the guides, but that was also true about
the gatekeepers.
If you examine the way Descartes relied on Mersenne to assemble dia-
logue partners or the way Oldenburg connected scientists of his day, what
went on looks very similar to what happens on blogs, where certain high-
profile bloggers develop links and references that suggest to other people
the direction their reading might go. So we have a pattern that resembles
the earlier one: self-publication with few gatekeepers, native guides making
recommendations, and connectors who know the field, all of which lead to
strong and pervasive informal communication that is linked and made pub-
lic. Journals and books can no longer dominate and filter the conversation.
There is, of course, one enormous difference between today and the 17th
and 18th centuries, namely, that far more people are involved. The result is
an avalanche of information and opinion being self-published. There are
also crowds of guides offering their suggestions. So what is new and what is
needed are tools for dealing with a vast expansion of information and links
and suggestions for paths through the thickets. Those tools are developing,
but we do not know what form they will take.

4. 38 Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy
Bibliography
Antognazza, M. R. (2008). Leibniz, an intellectual biography. Cambridge, England:
Cambridge University Press.
Borgman, C. L. (2007). Scholarship in the digital age: Information, infrastructure, and
the internet. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Descartes, R. (2006). Meditations, objections, and replies (R. Ariew & D. A. Cress,
Eds.). Indianapolis: Hackett. (Original work published 1641)
Cottingham, J., Murdoch, D., Stoothoff, R., & Kenny, A. (Eds.). (1991). The
philosophical writings of Descartes: Volume 3. The correspondence. Cambridge, Eng-
land: Cambridge University Press.
Hall, M. B. (2002). Henry Oldenburg: Shaping the Royal Society. Oxford, England:
Oxford University Press.
Hall, M. B., & Hall, R. (1965). Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg. Madison: Uni-
versity of Wisconsin Press.
Leibniz, G. W. (2007). The Leibniz-Des Bosses correspondence. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press.
Rettburg, J. W. (2008). Blogging (digital media and society). London: Polity.
Spinoza, B. (1995). The letters (S. Shirley,Trans.). Indianapolis: Hackett.
The Man on the Cellphone
MICHAEL JOYCE
Vassar College
The man talking loudly on the cellphone on the commuter train is a figure
of consciousness. Much of what he says is lost to us in the face of our bore-
dom or annoyance or simply the passing time. Even the occasional over-
heard intimacy disappears mutely into a procession of pornographic images
and memories arising from dreams, the computer screen, advertisements
and television.
What he says has nothing to do with our destination, and little to do
with his own beyond transient arrangements and appointments. Nor—and
this has become a commonplace observation—has it much to do with the
world within which we, and he, move. The phone fixes no location in the
sense of address, home, or affiliation. Even knowing that his coordinates

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