Academic Evolution

The Coming Change in Humanities Publishing: A Blog Series

When I started Academic Evolution I was mid-way through a series on my main blog regarding changes to academic publishing (focused on the humanities but not exclusively). I thought I would finish off that series where I began it, but since it is so relevant to the subject of this new blog I thought I'd at least list the index post here. As always, your feedback is most welcome.

Academic Evolution: The Podcast

I'm excited to work through ideas for the Academic Evolution blog and future book in various ways, and hope to do so in part through a podcast I'm now planning. I put together an intro bumper (about 30 seconds) drawing on the voice talent of a local singer I admire. Hopefully this will give a sense of tone and scope to the podcast. What do you think?

Academic Evolution: The Book

This blog is intended to become Academic Evolution, the book. My model is Chris Anderson, whose Long Tail blog helped bring about his seminal book of the same name. Similarly, I am beta testing my ideas, developing them in keeping with the principle of transparency and with the goal of inviting public review and collaboration. I'm smart enough to know others are often much smarter, and I firmly believe that publishing one's thinking process improves it. So, here's the working table of contents for the book. Obviously I will be making each of these proposed chapters the subject of my various blog posts. Let's figure this out together! I welcome your suggestions:

Burning Redwoods: The Lost Assets of Academia

The intellectual output of a university over time is massive--like a forest of redwood trees. Ironically, much of that output is treated as byproduct and consequently has a much more limited life and impact than it might have. I'm talking about classroom discussions, teaching materials and media, and those countless student papers, presentations, and projects around which so much of education revolves. These are seen as having ephemeral value within the educational process, but they are not treated as intellectual or institutional assets like vetted scholarship is. No effort is made to capture, preserve, or make available some of the best intellectual efforts and tools produced by faculty and students alike. These are the lost assets of academia. I will explain by extending the redwood analogy.

Academia's Tottering Republic

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who watches the watchers?) --Juvenal (after Plato)

Raphael's fresco of Plato's Academy

I am an academic, someone who continues to benefit from and who tries to pass along to students the glories of learning. And I truly think they are glories. I owe infinite debts to teachers and mentors, to books and to countless lectures and discussions. The passport of literacy and the structure of school have brought me privileged citizenship in academia's republic. I am grateful.

Introducing the 'Academic Evolution' Blog

"The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.” --Alfred North Whitehead

Academic Evolution is a blog dedicated to discussing where the new media is leading higher education, publishing, and teaching as the traditional institutions for producing and communicating knowledge are both enhanced and challenged in the digital age.

Knowledge is evolving in step with communication. What counts as knowledge, who controls it, where it is generated and consumed, how it is revised and developed--all of this is at stake and in question due to democratized media creation, social networking, broadened access, new modes of representing knowledge, new discovery methods, the crossover between entertainment and information, and emerging economic models. What is "the book" or "the press" or even "the university" in the age of Open Access, social knowledge, and the semantic web? These revered institutions no longer monopolize the circulation, creation, or authentication of knowledge.

So much is in flux right now in how we find, develop, communicate, validate, teach, use, and re-use knowledge, and so much is at stake--intellectually, economically, pedagogically, academically. The institutions that we have relied upon to produce, organize and communicate authoritative knowledge (in other words, traditional scholarship, libraries, academic publishing, and classroom teaching) are all competing now with the vibrant and abundant media culture that inundates us. It is a phenomenon that alternately dazzles and threatens us with its splendors and grotesques, and this genie isn't going to go back into his bottle.

Everyone knows something very big is in play. Some have embraced the new media culture with abandon; others dismiss it as digital detritus. Some see the electronic world as a playground; others, as the opening gambit of a technological apocalpyse. Somewhere between the extremes there must be a way to make the best of our electronic evolution, a way to preserve order amid change as well as change amid order (as Whitehead so aptly put it).

And so I launch this blog--a spinoff from my more general personal blog (where I'd begun discussing these issues enough to merit a more focused blog). I'm preparing a wiki to accompany this, a place to organize my own evolving thoughts along with the feedback I hope to receive. Thanks for reading, and please join me in the conversation.

What do you think? Are we in an academic evolution? What are the key issues from your perspective?