Scholarly Skywriting at the Speed of Thought
Stevan Harnad, UQAM, U Southampton
Language co-evolved with human cognition 300,000 years ago and made distributed, interactive thought possible.The invention of writing preserved thought, making science and scholarship possible, but at the cost of slowing its turnaround time far below its neurological potential. Web quote/commentary has at last made it possible to fast-forward scholarly skywriting to the speed of thought.
2. Speed of Thought
This is not the one I’m talking about:
This is:
3. Thinking Out Loud
The evolution of language made it possible for us to think aloud, share our thoughts, pass them on by word-of-mouth:
Hearsay was the beginning of distributed cognition.
4. Mushroom Gathering
Most of cognition is adaptive category acquisition: Learning what kind of thing to do with what kind of thing.
5. Cognitive Commons
The result of this collective category acquisition has been our shared, cumulative knowledge: our species’ “Cognitive Commons”
6. Four Cognitive Revolutions:
Speaking (fast turnaround time)
Handwriting (slow turnaround time)
Print (slow turnaround time)
Skywriting (fast turnaround time)
7. Category acquisition
There are four ways to acquire categories
1. Inborn
2. Doing (trial/error experience + error-corrective feedback)
3. Showing
4. Telling
Our species is the only one capable of Telling.
8. Showing vs. Telling
Pantomime vs. the full power of propositions
9. Seeing vs. Saying
10. Revolution #1: 300,000 Years ago:
The Advent of Language
11. Parallel vs. Serial Processing
Seeing is parallel
Saying/Hearing is serial, with real-time contsraints
12. Gesture vs. Speech
Language probably began with gesture and pantomime (showing)
Gestures only became language once they became arbitrary, and propositions replaced pantomime.
Then language migrated to the medium of speech because of the functional advantages or speech (including timing)
13. Dialogue and InstructionLanguage can describe, define and explain,but it does this at a biological, interactive tempo set by speech and hearing
14. Production, Perception, and Discourse Timing
The speed of thought co-evolved with the interactive speed of speech
15. Speed of Cognition (Thought)The brain is biologically adapted for the real-time speed of oral dialogue: intercognition
16. Distributed Cognition“Offloading Cognition” onto other brains, media and devices
17. The Oral Tradition
Speech can be one-on-one or one-on-many
but it carries and lasts only as far and long as word –of-mouth does
17. Verba Volunt, Scripta Manent
Words Vanish, Writings Perdure
19. Revolution #2: 6000 years ago The Advent of Handwriting
20. Birth of ScienceScience began with language, but…
21. Letters, Journals, Turnaround Time and the Speed of Thought
…science and scholarshiponly came into their ownwith the invention of writing,winning permanence, but…
22. Speech vs. Handwriting
…at the cost of a radical slow-down in turnaround time well below the speed for which thinking was biologically adapted
23. 600 years ago: PrintPrint enhanced preservation and scope, but still kept interactions far below the biological turn-around time of real-time speech: Spoken interactions are online cognition; written interactions are offline cognition.
24. Handwriting vs. Print
Turnaround time was still hopelessly out of synch with the real-time biological speed of thought, but then…
25. 40 years ago: the Internet
26. 20 years ago: the Web
27. Email and Electronic Discussion Lists
Written discourse was accelerated to the speed of thought
28. Public Quote/Commentary: Skywriting
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29. Scholarly Skywriting
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30. BBS "Open Peer Commentary”A peer commentary journal (1978) that began 40 years before its time It was always waiting for the medium that makes “scholarly skywriting at the speed of thought” possible
31. Open Access: The Real Motivation
The real motivation for Open Access is not just to get peer-reviewed research articles online and freely accessible…
32. Scholarly Skywriting at the Speed of Thought
… but to make real-time public quote/commentary on the Open Access research corpus possible, by restoring cognitive interaction to the speed of thought
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33. Collaboration and Interactive Cognition
34. “Live” Dialogue with Dead TextSkywriting is public, global, interactive(and even possible with dead authors!)
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35. Our Cognitive Commons
Brody, T., Carr, L., Gingras, Y., Hajjem, C., Harnad, S. and Swan, A. (2007) Incentivizing the Open Access Research Web: Publication-Archiving, Data-Archiving and Scientometrics. CTWatch Quarterly 3(3). Dror, I. and Harnad, S. (2009) Offloading Cognition onto Cognitive Technology. In Dror & Harnad (Eds) (2009): Cognition Distributed: How Cognitive Technology Extends Our Minds. Benjamins
Harnad, S. (1995) Interactive Cognition: Exploring the Potential of Electronic Quote/Commenting. In: B. Gorayska & J.L. Mey (Eds.) Cognitive Technology: In Search of a Humane Interface. Elsevier. Pp. 397-414. _____(2003) Back to the Oral Tradition Through Skywriting at the Speed of Thought. Interdisciplines. _____(2005) To Cognize is to Categorize: Cognition is Categorization, in Lefebvre, C. and Cohen, H., Eds. Handbook of Categorization. Elsevier.
Poynder, R. (2007) From Glottogenesis to the Category Commons. Open And Shut. Shadbolt, N., Brody, T., Carr, L. and Harnad, S. (2006) The Open Research Web: A Preview of the Optimal and the Inevitable, in Jacobs, N., Eds. Open Access: Key Strategic, Technical and Economic Aspects. Chandos.