Scratchpad
(academia, boundary objects, culture wars, history of science, human-human interaction, misunderstanding, specialization — )
6 Aug. 2008
Oooh, ooh! Less than 24 hours after I had a lovely if hyperbolic conversation about hating Foucault because he singlehandedly killed academia, Karen sent me a link to her latest article (Science in the Everyday World, Karen Rader and Katherine Pandora) along with a couple of blog reactions to it. And what should the whole mess turn out to be, but about my four favorite subjects! (Academic isolation & specialization, taking things for granted, boundary objects, and human-human interaction, for those keeping track.) Hot damn.
Anyway, first thing that jumps out at me and that I'm embarrassed to realize is that Karen is also very much into finding ways to reconnect academic life to public life. I had no idea. Now - in retrospect - as I look back at her courses, it becomes obvious. But I suppose I took for granted as an undergrad that the fruits of academia were supposed to have some sort of connection with the hoi polloi and so never noticed this as something that drove her reading selections. Ah, for the idealism and naivete of youth.
At any rate. Blah blah blah. The article.
The most interesting thing about the article (at least as far as I'm concerned, the article just said a bunch of stuff I agree with...that's never particularly interesting) is actually in the responses to it. And in this, I think, lies its strength - it makes many of its own points in the reaction to it!
Reaction 1
Fuck those arrogant bitches for saying that history is better than science and that scientists are arrogant bitches. Who do these two think they are, anyway?!
Actually, they said nothing of the sort, but it's fascinating that all the responses so far believe they did. What R&P actually said was that all specialists are arrogant bitches, whether scientists or historians. As a remedy to this, they propose studying and understanding reactions to one's work - both reactions from other academic disciplines as well as reactions from the general public.
But the telling bit is in the reaction. Why did everyone misread this? In setting up a hostility between science and the humanities that doesn't actually exist in the article, are the scientists doing the reading in fact speaking truth to such a hostility? Does the fact that all the reactions also reference each other while making this same mistake mean that the respondents are simply copying each other's reactions? Do closed communities perpetuate mistakes? Would opening up a closed community to outside eyes alleviate such errors? And if that were the case...would....would that mean that R&P are correct to call for outside insight?!
Indeed, I can't help but suspect that this reaction more than any other proves Rader & Pandora just might be on to something.
Reaction 1a
They were incorrect to state that science and history don't get along. I can cite many examples of cross-referencing between these two disciplines.
They didn't state that science and history don't get along, nor did they state that the two don't collaborate. They stated that the two have much to offer one another. The difference is subtle but important. See response to reaction 1.
That said, it is a bit ironic that all the examples put forth as bastions of science reaching out to the public and not being insular are all part of the same Science Blogs community. Science Blogs, in my experience, is ridiculously tightknit and chummy. And insular. Which is precisely what R&P warn against in their article. Again, I feel that the reaction proves the article might be worth listening to, even if it does not say anything especially "new" or "groundbreaking."
Reaction 2
This article does not say anything new or groundbreaking.
No, it doesn't, which is a bit disappointing, I must agree. And yet the reactions to it indicate that it has hit a nerve, and the reactions to it are informative and provide insight in their own right. Which means that it might not be a "sexy" article, but it is clearly useful and necessary.
Reaction 3
Why the fuck were they blathering on about museums?! Museums are actually a place where scientists reach out to the public.
Yes, exactly, Einstein. Studying a place where science and the public interact is a very good way to study how science and the public interact.
Actually, though, this section is very much the heart of the paper, and it actually puts forward a ton of interesting thoughtlets that could be pursued endlessly (presumably Karen doesn't want to blow her wad in this paper and is saving them for her museum book?). But many of the questions left hanging here, even though unanswered, are at the heart of the rest of the article.
Most importantly...What is the purpose of science interacting with the public? Seriously. Ask yourself this question. What is the purpose? What does science gain by interacting with the public? Do they get future scientists? An informed populace? Better public policy? A warm fuzzy feeling? Are they simply doing their part as decent human beings? Will they get useful and informative feedback? New scientific knowledge? Understanding the goal is crucial in designing the best mode of interaction, and it certainly shouldn't be a stretch to think analyzing a place and time period where these questions have already been grappled with would be useful.
Reaction 4
OMFG, they didn't talk about my field's existing body of knowledge in this matter.
That's because they are not part of your field. The whole point of the article was that all fields have something to add to one another. Their example, because it is their field, is that historians of science have something to add to science. That does not preclude the reverse scenario, nor does it preclude some other field having something useful to bring to some other table.
Reaction 5
Rader and Pandora do not propose adding anything to scientific knowledge.
No, they didn't. It's too bad they didn't have the balls to, either, because it wouldn't be much of a stretch to have done so, and it's the one thing that would have most improved the article. R&P would posit doing their part as decent human beings and getting useful feedback as the reason for bridging the gap between science and the public. Personally, I would add new scientific knowledge to that. Recognizing where people understand - and, more importantly, misunderstand - science holds the key to identifying holes in scientific knowledge. You don't learn the most interesting things by repeating the same things over and over. You learn new things by finding anomalies. Errors. The unexpected. Seeing where the reaction doesn't match what you expected it to be.
Truthfully, I think the article didn't go far enough. The main point is that alternative sources of information are useful because they can bridge the divide between science and the populace, but as far as I'm concerned it should have also said that alternative sources of information can rectify blindspots with a discipline. Perhaps this was implicit. Perhaps not. But I wish they would have had the balls to have said it outright. Yes, I absolutely agree with the article that as human beings and functioning members of society, academics owe it to their fellow citizen to engage with them and show them a level of respect - if not as peer specialists, as peer human beings. But I also believe that this lack of respect blinds academics to errors in their own thinking. They begin to take certain facts for granted, when it would only take a listen to different quarters to realize the error. Diversity is not vital merely because it is the right thing to do (which, granted, is damn important). But it also has important practical implications in that it can help overcome shortcomings within a field. IMHO, any academic that does not look outside the field for sources of inspiration should be considered both negligent and incompetent as a practitioner.
Reaction 6
(My reaction)The article does not actually bridge the gap between science and the public.
Ironically, the article proposes to bridge a gap, but fails to speak to either scientists or the public in their own language. Technically speaking, the article's propositions are sound (which I hope perhaps I've shown a bit above). But it doesn't quite manage to sell itself. Since it seems to be trying to sell itself to the scientist at this point, I think that Reaction 5 is the most damning. They aren't proposing to add anything new to science. Which, to the scientist, apparently, is all that matters?
The response to reaction 5 was telling because it indicates where scientists' priorities lie. At least one reaction actually belittled R&P for being so provincial as to give a shit about being decent citizens. "Fuck that silly nonsense," the respondent might as well have said. "Scientists just want something that'll matter in a lab."
Indeed. Perhaps that was the most telling response of all. Fuck the public, those stupid twats. And fuck you, you useless historian. You have not increased my specialized knowledge of science, and so you have just wasted the 30 minutes of my time that it took to read your article. (To be fair, this is not literally what he said. I am putting a lot of subtext here. He also appears to be a historian putting himself on shaky ground by speaking for scientists, instead of actually being a scientist? Nonetheless, based on the response, scientists either do have this attitude or other people believe they do...and there's something interesting to be gleaned from either scenario.)
In the end, the article was technically right on all counts. But it failed at least partially in its stated goal because it either forgot its audience or misjudged their reaction badly. Apparently, talking about science is not enough for the historian to do. They must also sell it back to the scientist. At this point, learning from the reactions might be the most useful thing R&P could do.
Comments (2)
(access, culture wars, internet, language, politics, segregation — )
23 Jan. 2008
I finally decided that after being in NY for four months it was time to check out at least one local lesbian hangout, albeit with trepidation. (Honestly, could there possibly be a less interesting scene in the entire world than a lesbian bar? If so, morbid curiosity impels me to keep looking for it.) So I popped on down to a little joint in the West Village, sidled up to the bar, turned to my left, and to my complete non-surprise saw another Sarah Lawrence grad from my class on the stool next to me. We'll call her H.
Needless to say we got to talking (if nothing else, it's hard to shut a Sarah Lawrence student up) on a whole host of topics, including words, neighborhoods, experiments in group ethics, pulling people off of subway tracks, girlfriends, the Internet, waiting tables, tiny apartments. You know, the usual topics for liberal arts geeks who get together. All in all, quite an enjoyable evening, and I had to scold myself for expecting it to turn out badly.
Even so, I was - and have remained - particularly discouraged by one aspect of the conversation. We were talking about words. I believe her friend asked whether a particular word was a real word or if she was making it up, and the bartender, who was a weird, veritable font of random trivia and aspires one day to be on Jeopardy, indicated that it was. Then the OED came up and we started talking dictionaries and made up words. I suggested that if H. was really as intrigued and simultaneously disgusted by made-up words as she indicated, she should check out the Urban Dictionary.
Now, as an aside, I find Urban Dictionary wonderful and fascinating and hilarious, and although I used to be rather uptight about "proper English," I've since come to embrace how wonderful and rich language can be through the process of evolution. Sure, there are certain words that I abhor and refuse to use (I'm thinking mostly of business-ese here...the utilizes and synergies and concretizing), but, on the whole, I think that playfulness and ingenuity are admirable traits in all other areas of life, so why not with language?
So, having divulged that about myself, I shouldn't have to tell you that I was pretty crestfallen when the bartender piped in with, "Urban Dictionary? Oh my God, that is the worst fucking site ever. I fucking hate that site. It's an affront to the English language. It's illiterate, ghetto central," or something pretty similar.
I felt like I had to come to the site's rescue. "Well that's the point, isn't it? That's what makes it so fascinating. I mean, it's precisely because these aren't the types of words you would use that it's so wonderful. This isn't stuff you're going to hear from most of your friends or the circles you normally run in, it gives you a little window into a whole different culture." Which is true, but I know that my defense came across as pretty lame.
And then, what the fuck out of the blue, H. comes at me with something about how everyone thinks the Internet is so wonderful but it's not, because it leaves out whole swaths of the population. Essentially, she came at me with the access argument, but couched in slightly different terms. Her implication to me was how could I be defending the Internet as being great when there are so many minorities who aren't represented on it? (As if that's the Internet's fault and not society's fault, but I haven't quite got to that part of the story yet).
Now, that's fine, that's all well and good, I've heard that argument a million times before, but the part that really slapped me at the time and which has only more persistently been seeping into every pore and just nagging the hell out of me ever since is that we were just discussing a website frequented by and essentially made by these very same "underrepresented minorities" she was purporting to defend, and she and everyone else in the conversation was trashing the site as being an illiterate piece of shit. But more to the point, they were making it very, very clear that they absolutely, positively do not go to those sorts of websites.
So the bit that's really started to nag at me is just how accurate is the party line on underrepresented groups on the Internet? And I do mean party line - I hear this argument stated as fact all the time on any number of the mailing lists I'm on, in articles in the Times, on Slate, Personal Telco...everywhere. (And by everywhere, I mean everywhere there are liberal, white, educated folk who have the white man's burden to make sure everyone gets access, or at least talk about it whether or not they are actually trying to do anything about it.) After watching the conversations in such places carefully over the last several years, after studying topics like viral marketing, after listening to endless political rhetoric, I've become keenly aware of how truths wax and wane and become more true within closed communities and it's become very, very hard for me to accept anything as fact just because I hear it a lot. If anything, the more I hear something the more suspect it becomes in my mind. I've come to hate taking anything for granted, least of all my own beliefs.
So that's it. It's been bothering me like mad ever since I had this conversation. I've been on some crazy sites during my love affair with the Internet. Forums haunted by professional mercenaries. Social networks comprised of miners and welfare moms. Porn sites. I came across a blog the other day by and for perfume industry professionals that practically bordered on scent fetishism. Black power sites. Sites from school kids in rural Appalachia. Sites from African-American expats living in Africa. Latino dating sites. I even looked at a couple of neo-Nazi sites once...for a few minutes, anyway. Even I have my limits. But mostly I just stick to my little corner of things and chat with the folks I know and who have similar interests to my own. And that's the part that bothers me. Here we are talking about underrepresented this and unfair that and no access and human rights, and from what I've seen (and this extends beyond H., to be fair to her) most of the people doing the talking aren't willing to explore the very corners of the Internet they claim don't exist.
So is it that they don't exist? Or are they there and are we just too damn ignorant and self-important to know they do exist? Do we actually want to know they exist? Or maybe we want them to have access, but only if the pages they make look and sound white?
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(academia, books, culture wars, history, whiny illiterate derivative unimaginative fuckers — )
21 Jan. 2008
You know, if I have to read one more single fucking article or hear one more whiny lament about how reading is dying, I am just going to pull out some batshit crazy whupass on the mother fucker that dared to snivel out that ridiculous platitude yet again.
- Books are not the only form of reading, you fucking dipshits.
- Not everyone in the world has the leisure time to sit around reading all day. Some people have to actually work for a living doing all the things you rely on having done but are not able or willing to do yourself. When you learn and actually begin to do every single one of those things, come back to me and we'll rediscuss why reading is more important than all of those other things.
- Please note that historically, reading by the dirty unwashed masses was done as a means of personal and economic betterment. In other words, necessity and personal gain. Reading by the rarefied few was done for fun. The same is still true.
- Please note that both types of reading in point three are just that - reading.
- Stop only counting "acceptable" forms of reading in your bogus studies. It makes them painfully meaningless.
- Stop conflating change in reading habits with decline in reading habits.
- Pick a line in the sand and stick with it. Twats like you were decrying the death of reading over a hundred years ago. Then they were doing it 80 years ago. Then 60. If you are all to be believed, no one left in the world even understands the concept of a letter, much less has the ability to actually read it. Pick a definition of "death" that you can actually quantify and prove to me - one that doesn't involve comparison of others' reading to your own.
- Read a book on the history of reading, for the love of god.
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(academia, culture wars, information, knowledge, progress — )
17 Dec. 2007
Dan Cohen had an interesting blog post a few days back that I've only just bothered to read. Of course it turned out to be quite fascinating, which just goes to show that I should keep on top of these things better.
At any rate, the post in question is on digitization and repatriation. Specifically, he asks if digital objects, photos, etc. are so finely detailed that they convey as much information as the original object, should museums give back stolen artifacts and keep digital versions of the object for scholars to look at?
The interesting offshoot of this, at least as far as I am concerned, is the question posted by a reader "Which is more valuable - information about an object, or the object itself?" Scholars, naturally, would tend to say the information. Without information, an object is simply a pretty trinket. But when you imbue it with meaning, when you investigate it and understand it, then it obtains actual value.
Although I actually agree with this on a very gut level, as both a fake-scholar and...well...okay, fine an information fetishist, are you happy?....I also differ very deeply from many academics I've met in suspecting that this is a personal obsession and not, in fact, some sort of fundamental truth. I also suspect that this is likely at the core of the public's distrust and turn from academia (another topic of personal fascination and dread). The public, on the whole, doesn't care about ideas. They care about what they can do with those ideas. Ideas, knowledge, information for their own sake are simply wanking. But put those things to good use, and then we have something to subsist on.
So which is better? Cooking up a wonderful and delicious meal and being content in the fact that it's there and we know it's good? Or actually enjoying the fruits of our labor by eating the damn thing?
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(book, cognition, culture wars, history, the more things change — )
30 Jul. 2007
One of my greatest pet peeves is when people come out with statements like, "Harkening back to a more innocent and happier time" (which I just read about 10 minutes ago as a statement describing the vibrancy of swing, which would have been a favorite during the innocent and happy Great Depression, for fuck's sake). Likewise, "Back in my day, [fill in the blank]" or, my personal favorite, "People were just so different then."
Why should this rub me the wrong way, even the most theoretically educated people ask me? Liberals. Conservatives. The religious. The not-so-religious. Men. Women. Poor people. Rich people. I hear this from all sides, albeit on different topics. Perhaps some grow wistful thinking of the glory days of the Victorian era, or others misty eyed thinking of their days hitchhiking cross country, or perhaps back to when everyone still said "Ma'am" and "Sir."
My complaint, though, is that these anecdotes or observations do not describe differences in people or attitudes, they describe differences only in customs. In other words, they don't describe some fundamental difference about the things we believe or desire - something fundamental about human nature itself - they only describe differences in the particulars of dress, actions, or behaviors. In time, nations might change who they hate or why they hate them, but it doesn't stop them from creating enemies of someone. Failing to see this strikes me as simultaneously failing to understand both history and human nature. And, needless to say, if we are to accept the maxim that understanding history allows us to make an attempt at not repeating it, the above attitude suggests to me that we're pretty much doomed to fail.
I've been especially reminded of this lately reading the fairly intriguing Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. Written originally in 1841 (yes, that's right, note it again - 1841), it details frauds, fads, and fashions that have gripped entire nations. It makes it quite clear that we keep falling for the same tricks over and over (and over and over), both in the text itself and for the reader who troubles him or herself to draw parallels to modern events that bear resemblance.
But what drew my attention even more than that was the way the author condescendingly talks about the buffoons who could possibly, possibly fall for such obvious nonsense. The disdain just drips off the pages. Without having the book in front of me, one example in particular springs to mind, in which he's deriding the common man for the ease with which he picks up and then drops various fads, and just how easily entertained he is by drek. But, the author decides, in a moment of charity, I suppose these poor, stupid souls must find something to make their dreary existence tolerable, so perhaps we should allow them their silly enjoyments (even though we, as educated men, can clearly appreciate how foolish such things are - aren't we grand?).
How many times have I heard this argument from the self-appointed intelligentsia, of which I sometimes hate to admit I am probably a member of, when discussing, say, Hollywood movies or television? Popular music? Bestsellers? Seriously - it kills me that we're still stuck in 1841 (or, realistically, 5000BC) in terms of how we interact with other people.
Perhaps the secret to all of this is that I should stop caring that we're doomed to fail, and just accept the world as it is. Perhaps that, after all, is the only way change will come to pass.
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