Peer Speed
John Husband in an email points to an article in the NY Times yesterday:
New Premise in Science: Get the Word Out Quickly, Online
A group of prominent scientists is challenging the leading scientific journals with the creation of two peer-reviewed online journals this week….
The way the Web has broken the lock between perfection and eternality is quite remarkable. We can go public with work in progress and not have to wait for the Wite-out to dry on our masterpiece before we acknowledge its existence.
And all of this is made possible through the magic of metadata: so long as we know that it’s a draft, we’re willing to make allowances and read it for what it is. (And the great virtue of blogs is that they’re understood to be perpetual rough drafts.)
So, let’s get syllogistical. Metadata allows for imperfection. Imperfection hastens time. Haste leaves little time to erect defenses. Therefore, metadata lets us be who we are. QED.
Categories: Uncategorized dw
Assumes the defenses we erect are not part of who we are. Is this valid? If I spend a lifetime, say, learning not to cry in public (arguments over whether this is appropriate aside), is that not a part of my everyday behavior, which is the most sure indicator of who I am? Agree that beyond these defenses may be the core of our identity, but the core is not the whole. Also would agree, if this is the argument, that exposing the core sans defenses may be useful to some extent.
Assumes the defenses we erect are not part of who we are. Is this valid? If I spend a lifetime, say, learning not to cry in public (arguments over whether this is appropriate aside), is that not a part of my everyday behavior, which is the most sure indicator of who I am? Agree that beyond these defenses may be the core of our identity, but the core is not the whole. Also would agree, if this is the argument, that exposing the core sans defenses may be useful to some extent.
Great point. There is a deep error in assuming that the “inner” you is the “real” you, and even in assuming that there is such a thing as the inner and outer selves. That’s one of the things I find fascinating about the Web as a public space: the selves we present/construct on the Web are necessarily entirely public because you are only *in* the Web space insofar as you are posting stuff publicly.
Yet I don’t entirely agree with you (while at the same feeling you are profoundly right). The defenses that get knocked down by the Web are (generalizing!) often ones that keep us from risking and trusting our community to acknowledge our fallibility. So, yes, if I am anally obsessive about not speaking unless and until I am 100% confident of what I say and how I say it, that obsessiveness is part of who I am. Yet it is a part that is obsessed with how I appear to others. There is a sense in which holding back for fear of looking foolish does hide who we are while also being part of who we are. This isn’t very POMO, but it sure is something I’ve *felt*.
Yes, there’s an incoherency in what I’m saying. I’m willing to accept all corrections and inversions.