tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36463626939658113922024-03-05T23:05:31.026-05:00dialogicalityInternet technologies are getting better at amplifying our voices, threatening discursive regimes everywhere as the masses learn to control the means of knowledge production. This blog documents the new, playful, malleable, globalized epistemological advances.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16346885169478942026noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3646362693965811392.post-15563161143098859172009-05-08T12:01:00.002-05:002009-05-08T12:01:42.764-05:00New idea for a wiki? Object-driven history projectI trapped an idea this morning and it makes me wonder if something like it might exist somewhere in the world of collaborative knowledge production:<br /><br />A written history of the world that is driven by an online, collaboratively-assembled catalogue of the historical objects and sources that have formed the histories we have read. Its the idea that if every historical claim can be traced back to artefact evidence, then maybe a new historical project can begin to rewrite a history that catalogues all historical objects housed in public/private collections first, then used to fleshed out the narrative afterwards. I’m imagining this done on a wiki, where people can simply try to obtain as many available digital photographic evidence of vases, scrolls, hand-written accounts, whatever and then organize them into a master chronology within the wiki space. There can even be geopositional links that point readers to where these objects may be located (in addition, offering them information on how to access them, who has studied them, etc.) These images could also have trackback links to certain written accounts that have relied on the evidence to fuel their historical narratives. Text in the body associates itself directly and immediately to the sources which form the outline of the project. Text is principally used to describe how these sources have been used by historians. In later versions of this project, master historical narratives could be added as a way to lend “surfability” for student audiences.<br /><br />I credit the inspiration for this idea, by the way, to an excellent grad-level methods course I took with Sandra Braman in 2006, who had me read Hayden White’s “Tropics of Discourse”.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16346885169478942026noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3646362693965811392.post-89615741727670520262008-01-05T13:59:00.000-05:002008-01-11T14:48:14.264-05:00Global outcomes for politically volatile knowledge<div><i><br /><br />"In the multiplicity of writing, everything is to be disentangled..."</i> -- Roland Barthes, 1977, The Death of the Author<br /><br /></div><div class="photo photo_right"><div class="photo_img"><a href="http://wisc.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=1712994&op=1&view=all&subj=7584180473&aid=-1&id=620600284"><img src="http://photos-c.ak.facebook.com/photos-ak-sf2p/v151/167/25/620600284/a620600284_1712994_2689.jpg" /></a></div></div><div class="clear_right"><br /><br />Pictured above: a visual scheme of the epistemic threading that forms a Wikipedia knowledge product. Technologies such as Wikipedia that open up to globally diverse communities of knowledge producers can simultaneously achieve different textual forms out of the same knowledge body :<br /><br /><b>Refined Knowledge</b><br /></div><div class="photo photo_none"><div class="photo_img"><a href="http://wisc.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=1713040&op=1&view=all&subj=7584180473&aid=-1&id=620600284"><img onload="adjustImage(this)" class="" src="http://photos-284.ll.facebook.com/photos-ll-sctm/v157/167/25/620600284/n620600284_1713040_5233.jpg" /></a></div></div><div class="clear_none"><br /><br /><b>Interlocked Knowledge</b><br /></div><div class="photo photo_none"><div class="photo_img"><a href="http://wisc.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=1713031&op=1&view=all&subj=7584180473&aid=-1&id=620600284"><img onload="adjustImage(this)" class="" src="http://photos-284.ll.facebook.com/photos-ll-sctm/v157/167/25/620600284/n620600284_1713031_8882.jpg" /></a></div></div><div class="clear_none"><br /><br /><b>Fuzzy Knowledge</b><br /></div><div class="photo photo_none"><div class="photo_img"><a href="http://wisc.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=1713052&op=1&view=all&subj=7584180473&aid=-1&id=620600284"><img onload="adjustImage(this)" class="" src="http://photos-284.ll.facebook.com/photos-ll-sf2p/v151/167/25/620600284/n620600284_1713052_4407.jpg" /></a></div></div><br /><br />As a many-to-many, global network of Wikipedians add volume and dialogical rigor to the processes involved in representing the realities we consume as knowledge, it will become increasingly unsatisfying to read what provincial knowledge producers (monologuers) have to claim about socially and politically shared realities. Knowledges of mutual interest to multiple communities will increasingly be held to new standards and production processes in a public domain of kaleidoscopically diverse thinkers.<br /><br />Much discussion has brewed from a desire to harness the "intelligence of masses" and to cross-pollinate our intellectual products with a wide-ranging perspectival, but as of yet there has been scant research observing the state of change affecting bodies of text currently being edited, blended, stitched, dissected or massaged on a daily basis by a new corps of global producers. As products fit for consumption, that the quality and accuracy of knowledge products have fared so well relative to Encyclopedia Brittanica is a promising sign from which to build upon.<br /><br />Yet much that has been said about the textual products yielded from this wide-reaching collaboration has been negative, citing a tasteless prose that lacks the <a href="http://wisc.facebook.com/note_redirect.php?note_id=7584180473&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.edge.org%2F3rd_culture%2Flanier06%2Flanier06_index.html&h=ea423bd15a8a9b7278bfa4d1faf64068" target="_blank" title="http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/lanier06/lanier06_index.html">distinctness </a>and authority of the individual's voice. Others have observed that parts of Wikipedia knowledge exhibit a tendency to be factualist, <a href="http://wisc.facebook.com/note_redirect.php?note_id=7584180473&url=http%3A%2F%2Fchnm.gmu.edu%2Fresources%2Fessays%2Fd%2F42&h=0baa9aadd8022c60d924f29380911021" target="_blank" title="http://chnm.gmu.edu/resources/essays/d/42">presentist</a>, unprofessional and, overall, lacking the <a href="http://wisc.facebook.com/note_redirect.php?note_id=7584180473&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.edge.org%2F3rd_culture%2Fsanger07%2Fsanger07_index.html&h=21bdf7454a0e53c6628f6c953262b91c" target="_blank" title="http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/sanger07/sanger07_index.html">synthesizing abilities</a> and literary flair in accounts written by well-regarded scholars. But why do these collaborative texts result in the ways observed? So far, no compelling explanations have been offered.<br /><br />This essay proposes that there are three fundamental actions that will determine the form, style and character of politically volatile knowledge in a <a href="http://wisc.facebook.com/note_redirect.php?note_id=7584180473&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FInformation-Politics-Web-Richard-Rogers%2Fdp%2F0262681641%2Fref%3Dsr_1_7%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dbooks%26qid%3D1195847136%26sr%3D8-7&h=ccb6a1b3da3a24e7cf1986b109e351af" target="_blank" title="http://www.amazon.com/Information-Politics-Web-Richard-Rogers/dp/0262681641/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195847136&sr=8-7">collision space</a> of culturally divergent producers.<br /><br />The main premise of my argument is that it does not suffice to raise issue with surface observations about form and style of Wikipedia textual products without discussing the underlying processes at the same time, which is what most commentators and researchers have thus far only succeeded in doing. This would be akin to seeing the colorful clash of sediment and rock in the Grand Canyon with a tour guide that won't explain the science behind the colors and shapes.<br /><br /><br /><b>Process #1: refining epistemology</b><br /><br />To refine, above many other attributes, means to selectively reduce, to narrow. It is a concept intimately tied to the scientific process which gathers multiple, competing theorems for the end purpose of eliminating all but the strongest of them. It is an impulse that runs deeply within the tradition of Western scholarly inquiry dating back to the days of Aristotle. Formal deductive logic, dialectics and agonistic reasoning are some among the many processes which have names all sharing a similar theme in spirit.<br /><br />Refining actions are the plainest and most evident processes observable in any Wikipedia entry. WikiMedia software which enables Wikipedians to edit any part of of the text in question, makes it easy for users to isolate particular segments of text, essentially creating the laboratory-like conditions of the observer-analyst. In addition, because any contribution is vulnerable to change by anyone else, individuals must rely on communicated persuasion through reasoning to preserve contributions they believe should stay. If by definition knowledge is to be refined, than this means that there is a will to identify the candidate contributions for deletion, usually arrived at by first comparing two or more competing contributions and weighing their relative strengths and weaknesses vis a vis the other. The contribution deemed superior rises, the inferior is replaced.<br /><br />It is not just strictly empirical/factual content that is easily refined in Wikipedia. Words, ideas, narratives and ontological categories of knowledge become fair game. Wikipedians are constantly reviewing contributions that mutually exclude each other and deciding as a group to banish that candidate contribution with the weaker justification.<br /><br />In this sense, knowledge refinement fits perfectly into a collective intelligence theory which posits that given enough problem solvers, all imperfections can eventually be fixed ("given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow"). As of late 2007, we have no studies to suggest what percentage of Wikipedians feel that the primary motivation for editing is to distill for knowledge purity through a collective intelligence vetting process.<br /><br /><br /><b>process #2: Interlocking epistemology </b><br /><br />If interlocked knowledge can be proven to be a primary method of knowledge production, than this would do much to explain all the robust user activity surrounding representations of political and social realities, or what I will refer to from hereon as the politically volatile. After all, once a full description of an apolitical entry (say the history of the medieval garden plow) has been constructed, editors move elsewhere and the article stabilizes. Much more labor and intellectual energy must be spent in the deliberative spaces behind sectors of Wikipedia devoted to social knowledge. How much space Wikipedians decide to allocate within G.W. Bush's biography to his alleged cocaine abuse is very much the kind of question that is difficult to resolve with a refining action since different cultures will subscribe to their own preferred allotments of irreverent presidential knowledge.<br /><br />Thus, the idea behind interlocked knowledge is that no global consensus for social knowledge can be achieved if it does not attempt to integrate in some fashion from the multiplicity of fragmented representational value systems. The key premise under this paradigm of knowledge construction is that true social knowledge is a product of intellectual negotiation via the interweaving of idea-concepts into Wikipedia knowledge products. This method is an expression, essentially, of the social constructionist theory of knowledge. Any Wikipedian working under this modus operandi, is not necessarily averse to knowledge refining actions. A social constructionist Wikipedian has no pre-constructed notion of what the eventual knowledge product must look like. Rather this type of user believes that the quality of the knowledge will reflect the processes that gave rise to it (i.e. determined by variables such as cultural make-up of a particular entries' user demographics and structure of the knowledge production space). Perhaps Wikipedia is an experimental space, like a crystal ball, where individual hope to test their limited view against a exalted form of consciousness, in this case, a body of thinkers synergized by the effects of collective co-construction.<br /><br />It is much more likely, however, that politically volatile knowledge attracts intellectual antagonists who attempt to inflect knowledge products with a particular world view. The resulting consequence of multiple agents exerting a force onto a text is an inadvertent change to the textual product over time. In cognitive semantics, a creative conceptual blend caused by divergent, oftentimes clashing inputs is called a "double-scope blend."<br /><br />In Wikipedia the metaphor of interlocked threading differs from a refined thread, since one strand of thread does not supress the other one. There is not pointed end to the interlocked thread metaphor, no refined point of truth at the tip. What we have with interlocked knowledge is a simple conceptual blend of two or more separate strands of thinking, interwoven for better or worse in a textual bind.<br /><br /><br /><b>process #3: Fuzzy Knowledge</b><br /><br />Another outcome entirely for massively authored writing projects could be the end of genealogically traceable encyclopedic representations. Whereas with interlocked knowledge the origins of the knowledge are somewhat traceable to a few users' blended inputs over time; with fuzzy knowledge, the many users' inputs are so vast, amalgamated and <a href="http://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=510">heteroglossic</a> that the visible seamlines of difference within the text are smoothened out, no longer appearing as a patchwork of variegated segments. <br /><br /><br />At a later stage in this paper, I will demonstrate how massively authored texts can yield information-rich and shapeless bodies of text. Facts are orphaned from their parent narratives. Knowledge synthesis soon becomes impossible as there is little social agreement over how to embody and codify raw information into a coherent structure we can call knowledge. Without little refinement and blending processes in the works, uncontrolled fuzziness can lead to an unabated information glut. The information quantity no matter its vastness is observed, even reviewed and commented on, but no mechanism exists to digest or distribute information into its proper ontological resting place. When we have fuzzy knowledge, in essence, there is no floodgate in place to prevent a sea of voices from washing away the narrative structure. <br /><br />Disorganization can exist at the foundation level as well. Take for instance an age old epistemological method used to organize raw information for the purposes of meaning construction: the knowledge topic; magnets of raw information, topics appear as headers, organized alphabetically from A-Z. In traditional knowledge spaces, facts tend to obey a few, non-contradictory journeys towards the support of larger categories. Since it has been argued that categories are essentially arguments in themselves, what happens when in Wikipedia we see no limit to how many categories and topics can be created? If two people cannot agree on what a fact means within the context of one article, the other person will simply design a friendlier atmosphere for the disputed fact by way of reframing the host topic. Readers under these kinds of fuzzy knowledge conditions may experience a read that is confusing, pointless or incoherent.<br /><br />Given certain characteristics in textual features of politically volatile articles in Wikipedia that are analyzed later in this study, we must ponder whether Wiki collaboration is the technical realization of Roland Barthe's vision of a <a href="http://social.chass.ncsu.edu/wyrick/debclass/whatis.htm">text</a> that is decentred and liberated from particular voices and other situated collective consciousnesses. What may look like a long, amorphous and unelegant biography to historian <a href="http://chnm.gmu.edu/resources/essays/d/42">Roy Rosenzweig</a>, may actually be a text freed from the tyranny of authorial narrative.<br /><br />In a strongly worded criticism of Wikipedia's textual quality, critic Jaron Lanier writes "reading a Wikipedia entry is like reading the bible closely. There are faint traces of the voices of various anonymous authors and editors, though it is impossible to be sure". Lanier, preoccupied by the threat to mono-authored literature, seems to fixate on an aesthetic critique, never once pondering how how semantic forms in the text may have shifted/mutated as a result of a many-to-many encounter.<br /><br /><br /><b>Wikipedia's investment in objective encyclopedic representations<br /></b><br />To believe in semantic changes afoot as a result of a globalized encounter between diverse knowledge producers is to be skeptical of Wikipedia's core belief in universally objective representations of reality achievable through its <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view">Neutral Point of View </a>writing policy.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">to be continued...</span><br /><b><br /></b>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16346885169478942026noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3646362693965811392.post-22688620661991816022007-05-11T13:18:00.000-05:002007-05-11T20:32:35.173-05:00Wikis as tools of Critical Discourse Analysis<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><b>WikiSym 2007: Workshop Proposal (half day format)</b><br /><br />An excavation implies the unearthing of something that is hidden at the surface level - be it fossils or systematic bias in language. Wikis have been especially efficient at harnessing the diverse intelligence of many in order to scrutinize the textual utterances and contributions of others, one individual at a time. The "discussion pages" of politically-volatile Wikipedia entries are magnets for textual scrutiny. So what would happen if wikis had its globalized masses analyzing the published works of single authors?<br /><br />"Collaborative Excavations" is a proposed workshop to explore the possibility of using wikis to excavate and tease out the values that are cached in so called "objective" or "neutral" writing conventions of the journalism profession.<br /><br />In this context, a news report is assumed to belong to a particular discourse that is not necessarily bound by geography, but bound in some way within a larger system of meaning. It will be assumed that within a given news report, a group of wiki contributers will be able to easily identify highly conceptual terms that are fixed in particular ways.<br /><br />Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, in their theory of discourse, invoke Lacan's idea of the "floating signifier"; certain words or concepts feature a high degree of polyvalence (semantic relativity) than other words. However, these varied meanings can be flattened by particular discourses that temporarily "fix" the signifier in place thereby altering what can be signified. In this case, a word or phrase (one that is conceptually-loaded but now semantically fixed by the news report) will be identified as a potential "floating signifer" and submitted for collaborative scrutiny. Once the words are isolated for analysis, collaborators will attempt to identify alternative discourses that favor using this word in others ways that diverge from the article. Participants will attempt to rewrite sections of the article as it would have been written under the identified list of alternative discourses. All the re-writings will be juxtaposed for comparison.<br /><br />This workshop will also discuss the technological visual aids and tools that could be implemented within wiki software to supplement user experience in this exercise. For example, after the news report is analyzed, the font size/style of different words would vary by their identified degree of polyvalence. Each word is also a hyper-link, which takes the reader to a higher-level discussion regarding the relationship of that word to a number of discourses. </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">-----<br /><b>Said Kassem Hamideh</b> is a Master's degree student in the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Said is currently consulting with the non-profit interfaith organization, Children of Abraham, which unites Jewish and Muslim youth around the world in collaborative, wiki-based learning projects. Said also initiated the <a href="http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Conceptualize:_A_Wikiversity_Learning_Project">Collaboratively Building Concepts</a> project at Wikiversity. </p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16346885169478942026noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3646362693965811392.post-60681143869057886562007-04-22T16:30:00.000-05:002007-04-23T21:57:21.081-05:00NPOV opportunitiesI'm sure I'm not the only one who views Wikipedia as would a stoner who sees beauty in things that are not so apparently thought-provoking to industrious sober people.<br /><br />To these sober folks, Wikipedia is like a productive zone of collective beeworkers producing an impressive array of enyclopedia entries. In this functionalist or machinic sense, Wikipedia can be an amazing phenomenon in its own right, just not to me. It is not the statistic showing how Wikipedia far outpaces Encyclopedia Brittanica in quantity of articles that reveals to me its greatest beauty. Nor is it Wikipedia's formidable reputation as a source for accuracy.<br /><br />There is a higher purpose still that seems to still be eluding those who would rather <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Brandt">quibble</a> over the current status of a particular Wikipedia entry.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">puff puff<br /><br /></span>"Dude, the planet is calling its children together so they may heal. "<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">puff puff</span> <span style="font-style: italic;"></span><br /><br />And since this exercise tends to look rather like an acrimonious exchange between trenchant ideologues, the community of sober discussants don't see the hidden beauty of what is called a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view">"Neutral Point of View" (or NPOV) conflict</a>.<br /><br />But maybe they would see what I'm seeing were they to call it an <span style="font-style: italic;">NPOV opportunity</span>.<br /><br />We have been living in a dialogue-deficit economy. Just go to the library stacks and peruse through the Middle East Politics section. Witness the artefacts of years of academics talking at each other-- or at the very most, profiting off the others' utterances as an excuse to produce a new book. Collectively, academia has failed to do what one encyclopedia entry on Wikipedia has done: compel a large-scale human lock-in. One that won't be broken until every possible subjectivity has been worked through, transcended into a higher realm of dialogically-informed knowledge.<br /><br />Joseph Reagle, in his PhD <a href="http://reagle.org/joseph/blog/career/phd/dissertation/index.html">dissertation proposal</a> has identified this as the "transsubjective" goal of knowledge. Something I might venture to say, which is attainable only for the most politically benign of knowledges. It is sad to say that in the current state of our planet we can't even reach a healthy transsubjective portrait of what happened during the Holocaust. Just imagine, then, how difficult it would be to get a globally-coherent picture of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.<br /><br />It is in the context of this difficulty that I think people should be taking the longer view, by appreciating Wikipedia processes rather than Wikipedia products. Cormac Lawler's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Cormac_Lawler_dissertation-Wikipedia-Learning_community.pdf">M.A. thesis</a> takes this moment very seriously and I look forward to working with him and others one day towards optimizing the learning experience that is a very necessary consequence of knowledge production.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16346885169478942026noreply@blogger.com3