Beyond Open: Culture and Scaling in the Making of Knowledge
Open Access, Open Science, Open Government, Open Education. We often see these as new movements, set against an old world of broken – and closed – systems of scholarship and education. New technologies, primarily the web, have lifted the veil from our eyes to let us see this new world. If only we could build the right technology...mandate the right behavior then a new utopia of open scholarship will be upon us! The problem with this view is that it sees the disruption of the web as a one-off event that once worked through will provide a solution for all time. Framed that way this is obviously not true, but the challenge goes deeper than that. Scholarship, in its western institutionalized forms, has increased in scale continuously for at least 400 and possibly 2000 years. No social or institutional system can scale continuously over several order of magnitude. Therefore we must expect structural historical breaks. The question is not how to fix scholarship, but how on earth it has managed to last this long? I will argue that what sits at the core of this survival is a set of normative cultural values that privilege openness. Their application has been far from perfect but the concepts of communication, criticism, civility and inclusion have deep roots in our institutions and communities. At the same time community and identity are critical to scholarship, and both of these imply exclusion and boundary work to define community. My argument is that the culture, forms and values of western scholarship have held these two tendencies in productive tension, allowing the academy to address the ongoing scaling (and consequent inclusion) problem through social, technical and economic innovation. Our challenge is not simply to solve today's problems, but to re-imagine our institutions so that they continuously generate and are able to adopt the innovations necessary to continue to solve the scaling problem into the indefinite future.
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Beyond Open: Culture and Scaling in the Making of Knowledge
- 1. Beyond “Open” Culture and Scaling in the Making of Knowledge @cameronneylon cn@cameronneylon.net http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0068-716X
- 3. As a concept…open is reactionary; it gains meaning largely through a consideration of what it is not. Tkacz (2012)
- 9. 2. Knowledge is made by groups
- 10. ESOTERIC EXOTERIC Ludwig Fleck (1981 [1935]) Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact
- 13. *
- 14. *
- 15. Knowledge is a product of translation
- 16. General knowledge is produced at the boundaries of group in contact/conflict
- 18. 2. Knowledge is made by groups
- 21. Groups do not scale…
- 31. …and yet it grows…
- 32. 1 10 100 1000 10000 100000 1000000 10000000 1800 1850 1900 1950 2000 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed
- 33. Culture & institutions support scaling…
- 34. …but also have limits to scale
- 37. There will always be a next crisis…
- 40. IndustrialisationDistribution/Logistics Limitations 1950 1975 2000 What counts as scholarly? Peer Review
- 41. Many of the discussions of the future at CERN and the LHC era end with the question – “Yes, but how will we ever keep track of such a large project?”
- 42. Many of the discussions of the future at CERN and the LHC era end with the question – “Yes, but how will we ever keep track of such a large project?” https://www.w3.org/History/1989/proposal.html
- 43. IndustrialisationDistribution/Logistics Limitations 1950 1975 2000 What counts as scholarly? Peer Review The Web ? Discoverability/Siloing Trust
- 44. 1955 1965 1975 1985 1995 2005 2015 IndustrialisationDistribution/Logistics Limitations 1950 1975 2000 What counts as scholarly? Peer Review The Web ? Discoverability/Siloing Trust
- 45. …and yet it grows…
- 46. 1 10 100 1000 10000 100000 1000000 10000000 1800 1850 1900 1950 2000 …and yet it grows…
- 47. “Open” is the engine of scaling
- 48. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson
- 49. [ideas are as if] benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point; Thomas Jefferson
- 50. . . . I dare speak confidently and positively of very few things, except of matters of fact. Robert Boyle
- 51. “Of my being somewhat prolix […] I thought it necessary to deliver things circumstantially, that the Person I addressed them to might, without mistake, and with as little trouble as is possible, be able to repeat such unusual Experiments” Robert Boyle
- 52. [I will answer Linus’ objections] partly, because the Learned Author, whoever he be having forborne provoking Language in his Objections, allowes me in answering them to comply with my Inclinations & Custom of exercising Civility, even where I most dissent in point of Judgement.” Robert Boyle
- 53. [I] speak so doubtingly, and use so often, perhaps, it seems, it is not improbable, and such other expressions, as argue a diffidence of the truth of the opinions I incline to, and that I should be so shy of laying down principles Robert Boyle
- 54. Universalism, Communalism, Organised Skepticism, Disinterestedness Merton
- 55. “that not alone scientific readers, but those of every class, [...] to approach the source from whence this species of knowledge is derived” James Samuelson and William Crookes
- 56. “…merely an amateur, a lover of truth, who was impelled by curiosity ” Grant Allen
- 57. “Science” is an old culture that has survived over a long period
- 58. (Gradual, limited, imperfect) openness is an old aspiration
- 59. *
- 60. Diversity is a first order principle for knowledge creation
- 62. Elinor Ostrom (1990) Governing the Commons
- 63. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson
- 64. Elinor Ostrom (1990) Governing the Commons
- 65. IndustrialisationDistribution/Logistics Limitations 1950 1975 2000 What counts as scholarly? Peer Review The Web ? Discoverability/Siloing Trust Opening Up
- 66. IndustrialisationDistribution/Logistics Limitations 1950 1975 2000 What counts as scholarly? Peer Review The Web ? Discoverability/Siloing Trust Opening Up Closing Down
- 67. IndustrialisationDistribution/Logistics Limitations 1950 1975 2000 What counts as scholarly? Peer Review The Web ? Discoverability/Siloing Trust Opening Up Closing Down Opening Up Closing Down
- 68. Institutions for Productive Conflict
- 69. Institutions for Productive Boundaries
- 70. Institutions for Productive Conflict
- 71. A culture of openness Latour, Politics of Nature
- 72. How can one take new beings into account if one cannot radically change the position of one’s gaze? Latour, Politics of Nature
- 73. [They are]…precisely inventing through the intermediary of instruments and the artifice of the laboratory, the displacement of points of view that is so indispensable to public life. Latour, Politics of Nature
- 74. How can one take new beings into account if one cannot radically change the position of one’s gaze? Latour, Politics of Nature