Dear Per,
As always, I'm impressed at the delightful even handed way you have of
describing things, and the way you softly introduce difficult and
potentially revolutionary topics.
You asked 'Are we useful idiots?'.
I suggest we are more 'slow' and 'developmentally delayed' rather than
idiots. This is particularly in terms of outr design skills and abilities to
be aware of the future and to be able to see the past with first sight.
Almost all of what we consider and have considered normal and 'sacrosanct'
about academic publishing has been conventions shaped by technical issues.
Somehow we have overlooked the origins, become lazily overhabituated to the
conventions and naively made up justificaitons to support the point of
view.
An example is footnotes. Footnotes originated as a technical fix. If
something needed to be added after pages were typeset, a marker could be
squeezed into the maintext (often using a hammer) and the extra info
squeezed into the leading at the foot of the page. This saved the cost of
resetting the page, or worse, resetting all succeeding pages to the end of
the chapter. Somehow from there emerged a whole literary style theory about
footnotes. Those original technical issues that shaped the need for
footnotes no longer apply in an age of electronic typesetting. As a result
we are now slowly becoming aware useability of text is improved by avoiding
using footnotes. In parallel, over that time 'theories and practices of
footnotes' were developed to reinforce social and hegemonic control by
particular professional groups. The resistance to dropping footnotes is
primarily by those groups.
Similarly, technical issues that no longer apply shaped the roles of
journals and the need for peer review. Similar hegemonic resistances are
acting to maintain them.
I suggest, some forward thinking would indicate that the next steps in
academic publishing are to move away from journals and peer review, and
even, perhaps, books. Addressing these issues properly is distracted by
and goes much beyond the 'commercial' vs 'open' publishing debate and the
use of academics in those processes.
There are many benefits, particularly for improving research and knowledge
creation and, incidentally, for improving the quality of teaching and
learning. It will be interesting to analyses the motivations of those who
resist the changes. I'm happy to write more but this email is long enough!
So, Per, thank you for your insightful challenge. I see us not as 'useful
idiots' , instead as simply 'slows' that are weak in historical design
analysis and relatively incompetent at understanding the use of design in
changing the future. We can do better.
Best wishes ,
Terry
---
Dr Terence Love
PhD(UWA), BA(Hons) Engin. PGCEd
FDRS, AMIMechE, PMACM, MISI
Honorary Fellow
IEED, Management School
Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
Director,
Love Services Pty Ltd
PO Box 226, Quinns Rocks
Western Australia 6030
Tel: +61 (0)4 3497 5848
Fax:+61 (0)8 9305 7629
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