Dear Ken

You did indeed address my post thoroughly in terms of your arguments in the literacy thread. I agree with you, of course.

I gave the thread a different title because I was trying to make a point about disciplinary authority, which in my experience can be achieved in very different ways to the text-based social network processes that have been traditionally found in the university.

In this I was taking my lead from Tom Osborne's writing about the intellectual in the knowledge society, drawing on Gibbons, et al. I haven't yet looked at your keynote address about design curriculum challenges, but I have read your article on Design Education in the University (Friedman, 2003).

Osborne's article is a nuanced approach to many of the same ideas. He notes that the university is becoming more wordly, and the world becoming more like a university. The modern university is moving away from literary fields which establish disciplines "...the anchorage of the modern university is moving swiftly towards not any particular intellectual discipline but towards a post-disciplinary, multi-disciplinary, trans-disciplinary model derived ultimately from specific ways of understanding the logic of business " (Osborne 2004 p. 443).

With this in mind, I see disciplinary authority in some design fields developing through logic of business and the mediated production of 'ideas' that are 'worldly', rather than academically disciplined.

I certainly did not write that my university gives "research credits and research funding for social networking rather than for published research", or that it classifies a high web-profile as research. That would be irresponsible and completely contrary to the stance of my university.

I probably didn't express myself with precision and that's because the reasoned response I would prefer takes time.

But I am very interested in finding ways to exist in this more worldly university, without sacrificing scholarly principles. This list has supplied some really helpful responses. Ola Pilerot pointed me to 'information literacies' and a number of people on and off list have shared productive ways to collectively construct authoritative knowledge. Fil's 'citizendium' sounds very promising.

I'm looking forward to seeing a collectively authored literature review published in a design journal. The list of authors could be longer than the review!

Best wishes,
Amanda


Friedman, K. (2003). Design education in the university: a philosophical & socio-economic inquiry 5. Retrieved Nov 28, 2003, from http://www.desphilosophy.com/dpp/dpp_journal/journal.html
Gibbons, M., Limoges, C., Nowotny, H., Schwartzman, S., Scott, P., & Trow, M. (1994). The New Production Of Knowledge: The Dynamics Of Science And Research In Contemporary Societies. London, Thousand Oaks,: Sage.
Osborne, T. (2004). On mediators: intellectuals and the ideas trade in the knowledge society. Economy and Society, 33(4), 430-447.


On 2/07/11 1:39 AM, "Ken Friedman" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Dear Amanda,

It's my sense that you did not read my earlier response carefully
enough. I answered your question. I quoted the comment on "years of
endnoted interrogation of design canons" to address part of this
issue, but I also addressed the question you raised with respect to
social networks and disciplinary authority.

I stated that there is already a social network mechanism that fulfills
this purpose, and I argued that the university is such a mechanism. I
pointed the a wide rage of institutions that also constitute such a
mechanism. And I agreed that there might also be other forms. You have
raised the possibility twice now. We've both agreed that it is
possible. Many things are possible. The issue is to propose such "a
scholarly, rigorous approach to socially networked knowledge
production" that works. You haven't offered a workable proposal,
you've only raised the questions. So far, my argument is that
universities and the other mechanisms I described do the job quite
well.