[FM Discuss] Article for discussion: Publications are not for peers

[adam hyde]

hey Andy,

This 'peer review' issue is interesting. I asked a question at foocamp
to an author (I cant remember her name) about how online media effects
the writing process and her response was that its great that she can now
post material and have feedback from people (peer review). This is what
the net and digital media meant to her when it came to publishing.
Basically, take publishing and add something on the side.

It reminds me a lot of going to see some video artists present at the
Tate Modern some years ago. They talked about their practice, and the
golden day of video art and what they do now. At question time I asked
them 'what does digital media mean to you?'. Their answer, and i
remember it clearly, was that its soooo cool to have these handy little
digital screens on the side of the camera so you can see what you are
filming.

That was it. They didnt get, nor did the author, that networked media is
not an add-on to an existing practice. It transforms the entire model,
shifts what was important away to some dusty archive and reposits
fundamental questions about what it is we are actually doing.

I think this is why I was frustrated by the 'reimagining the book'
discussion at foocamp. We don't need to do this, we need to reimagine on
much much broader terms.

adam



On Tue, 2009-09-08 at 10:37 -0400, Andy Oram wrote:
> Michael Mandiberg's project is an important collaboration with FM.
> Maybe the collaboration will give some new authority to both sides.
> I'm sure somebody could write a book on gaining and using authority.
> But how does it grant authority to post to FM? If anybody can start a
> new book just by asking, what makes it desirable?
> 
> Maybe FM is a good place to be just because it's better organized than
> the average web site (faint praise there), the layout is somewhat
> better than other web-based material (I don't really think that's
> true), or people know it has a lot of material.
> 
> Or maybe the free software community has come to trust the community
> review process we use. If that's the case, we'd better make sure the
> process works and that quality is high.
> 
> My article is still a work in progress, because I feel somehow that
> peer review is a different mode from publishing, but I can't easily
> draw the line. I'm treating a blog as a publication site for this
> article, but the article says blogs are part of peer review. Maybe the
> question is one of attitude or power relationships, not media.
> 
> Another important theme Michael put in his mail was about crossing
> traditional classification boundaries. I think the publishing industry
> is more open cross-boundary projects than most fields. I can see why
> stores, art galleries, and even online sites have trouble carrying
> items that cross boundaries. Some book categories are like that too
> (Ursula Le Guin had trouble getting many of her books recognized
> because they were neither fantasy nor science fiction), but our field
> offers more opportunities than a lot of others.
> 
> Andy
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Adam Hyde
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