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PHD-DESIGN  December 2017

PHD-DESIGN December 2017

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Subject:

The Future of the University Library, The future of Journals, and Bush's "Memex"

From:

Don Norman <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Sat, 9 Dec 2017 09:55:16 -0800

Content-Type:

text/plain

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text/plain (226 lines)

Augusto made a wonderful comment that caused me to link my essay on the
future of Journals with the future of the research library, with the PhD
design list. Hence the new subject line for this post.

On Wed, Dec 6, 2017 at 2:44 PM, Augusto de Sousa Coelho <
[log in to unmask]> envisioned

"a library that works like our phd list, with cross references about
subjects, with several looks on the same subject, obtained through
different references, etc. A living system that indexes, suggests and
comments the indispensable bibliography, the basic bibliography and the
additional bibliography - knowledge graduation from general  for to very
specific knowledge."


Vannevar Bush, in his famous paper on Memex, describes something similar:
(As we may think, Atlantic Monthly, 1945)
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881/

Bush's dream is better described
in Wikipedia than in Bush's original article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_We_May_Think

Bush envisioned the ability to retrieve several articles or pictures on one
screen, with the possibility of writing comments that could be stored and
recalled together. He believed people would create links between related
articles, thus mapping the thought process and path of each user and saving
it for others to experience. ... Bush's article also laid the foundation
for new media. Doug Engelbart
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doug_Engelbart> came
across the essay shortly after its publication, and keeping the memex in
mind, he began work that would eventually result in the invention of the
mouse <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouse_(computing)>, the word processor
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_processor>, the hyperlink
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperlink> and concepts of new media for
which these groundbreaking inventions were merely enabling technologies.[1]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_We_May_Think#cite_note-Wardrip-1>


The idea that people would write marginal notes and comments on the items
they were reading, allowing others to trace their thought processes sounds
wonderful, but it fails in both scale and curation.

Yes, wouldn't it be wonderful to read an article on some topic and follow
the side comments, thoughts, and jumps across the related literature by
some deep thinker. But what if there were 10,000 people making comments?
What if some people were better deep thinkers than others. in fact, what if
some were just plain ignorant, or perhaps deliberate troublemakers.

PhD List works because it is relatively small and the major contributors
are well known, so the interested reader can deliberately follow their
thoughts or deliberately delete without reading.  Larger systems have more
difficulties.

Consider three examples: Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Brittanica,  and the
Journal "Brain and Behavioral Sciences."

In theory, Wikipedia allows anyone to comment and modify its articles. In
practice, that led to chaos, so Wikipedia still allows anyone signed in to
make editorial changes, but it now has a large set of rules about how
modifications and new articles can be done. In addition, there is a large
core of volunteer editors who scan the articles, ensuring that the
guidelines are followed.

For example, I am not allowed to add to an article with my opinions, even
if my opinions have been published in high-quality journals: only secondary
references are allowed, not primary ones. (This is an interesting rule
which does tend to keep the level of discourse high, because even though my
opinion is obviously brilliant and has been vetted by some authoritative,
refereed journal, its appearance in a secondary publication is
further validation: ideas that  appear in high-quality journals are
sometimes (often?) later found to be wrong.)

(Encyclopaedia Brittanica (EB), on the other hand, only published articles
by their hand-selected experts.  They do allow people to comment on the
articles, much like Wikipedia (EB copies this from Wikipedia), but rather
than let readers directly modify the articles, their comments go to Editors
who decide what to do with them. They used to take my opinions and publish
them directly because  I was a "certified" expert in some areas (I was on
the editorial advisory board of EB: Actually, my suggestions had to be
approved by a human editor). EB's model is to publish articles by
authorities, as opposed to Wikipedia which publishes "accepted wisdom." (I
always found it amusing that i could change material in EB but not in
Wikipedia.)

Which model is better? EB is much more authoritative, but it doesn't scale
well. The winner is clearly Wikipedia even though we are all warned to be
careful in trusting their material. (Even EB editors used to look up stuff
in Wikipedia).

Note that in describing Vannevar Bush's ideas (above) I recommended
Wikipedia rather than the original article, even though the article was
well-written and published in an everyday popular magazine. This tells us
something: I leave the determination of what it tells us as an exercise for
the reader.


"Brain and Behavioral Sciences" (BBS) is a commentary journal published by
Cambridge university press. Here is how its website describes the journal:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioral-and-brain-sciences

*BBS* is the internationally renowned journal with the innovative format
known as Open Peer Commentary. Particularly significant and controversial
pieces of work are published from researchers in any area of psychology,
neuroscience, behavioral biology or cognitive science, together with 20-40
commentaries on each article from specialists within and across these
disciplines, plus the author's response to them. The result is a
fascinating and unique forum for the communication, criticism, stimulation,
and particularly the unification of research in behavioral and brain
sciences from molecular neurobiology to artificial intelligence and the
philosophy of the mind.


Where do the different models succeed and where do they fail? The answers
offer lessons for the future of the library, the future of journals, and
the future of information dissemination.

The real difference is scaling and curation (authority). How do we cope
with thousands or millions (billions?) or readers and commentators. That's
the scale problem.

How do we know which comments are worthwhile? that's the curation and
authority problem.

PhD Design List solves both problems by being relatively small (3015
subscribers as of a few minutes ago). Moreover, the readers and
contributors are stable, with little turnover.  So it is possible to know
the major contributors --not personally, but through their comments and the
kind of responses they get.

Wikipedia solves the scaling problem by allowing anyone to contribute, but
by having strict rules of what is permitted. And when arguments get too
intense with too many revisions, they lock down the article, prohibiting
change.  They solve the authority problem by only allowing certain types of
material -- mostly being vetted by the secondary source rule plus a fierce
band of zealous (sometimes over-zealous) editors who screen all the
articles.  (It is still amazing to me that despite Wikipedia's huge size
and huge readership, the volunteer editors still manage to do as well as
they do. Note that Journal referees must be experts in the topics they
review. In Wikipedia, no expertise in the topic is required: the editors
are experts in the rules.

see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About

The tradeoff is that Wikipedia is an excellent reference source, but do not
expect to find novel ideas within it.

EB solved all the problems through careful vetting of the authors. It
produced high-quality articles, although often dull. (At one editorial
board meeting, one of the members said that her writings in EB were the
dullest stuff she had ever written, blaming the heavy weight of authority
that was imposed and the requirement to be equally fair to all points of
view, even ones shed strongly disagreed with.).  EB lost out by their
inability to scale.  They could only cover major topics. And the editorial
cost (in monetary amounts) was huge.

BBS solves the problem by restricting the comments to invited commentators.
It is also static, so that once the lead article, the comments, and the
author's response to the comments has been published, there is no mechanism
for further discussion and commentary. In other words, it avoids the
scaling problem.

===
Why is this related to the future of journals? Because of scaling and
curation. There are too many articles being submitted to too many journals.
Individuals can not keep up. Referees are swamped, and they can not keep
up.  Moreover, the economics of publishing and distribution has failed. So
the old model of carefully edited and reviewed papers is failing, except
for the few major journals in each field. Moreover, even the major journals
are suffering financially, with a number continuing to exist only because
they have some wealthy sponsor -- a large membership base or some
institution such as a university. Or perhaps because they are like
"Science" or "Nature" that are so well respected that people (scientists)
find them essential reading. A few elite journals will survive. But what
about the essential, high-quality journals that by their specialist nature,
have limited readership?

What is the future for journals such as Design Issues, Design Studies,
International Journal of Design, She Ji, ....? Remember the magazine ID? It
doesn't exist anymore.
https://www.fastcompany.com/1490624/what-killed-id-magazine

Scaling. Curating. Business models.  These are the major issues facing
today's research libraries, academic publishing, and other attempts at
forming viable communities for debate and discussion of deep, substantive
topics.

Don

On Wed, Dec 6, 2017 at 2:44 PM, Augusto de Sousa Coelho <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Dear Don,
>
> Thinking about your challenge, an idea that came to my mind was a library
> that works like our phd list, with cross references about subjects, with
> several looks on the same subject, obtained through different references,
> etc. A living system that indexes, suggests and comments the indispensable
> bibliography, the basic bibliography and the additional bibliography -
> knowledge graduation from general  for to very specific knowledge. It has
> worked well! The rest I think is bytes traffic!
>


> This feeling of recognition I leave to all who have managed and
> participated in this list.
>
> Best
> Augusto
>
> ​
-
Don Norman
Prof. and Director, DesignLab, UC San Diego
[log in to unmask] designlab.ucsd.edu/  www.jnd.org
<http://www.jnd.org/>


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