💾 Archived View for tilde.team › ~woland › This-Great-Xerox-Machine.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 04:00:58. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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This is not just some rant from an angry (former) student. This is a
feeble attempt at a manifest to save knowledge from the vulture-like
claws of the universities and publications. The universities have
turned themselves into a great xerox machine; publishing one research
after the other and printing the degrees much the same and handing
them out to those who help sustain this unhealthy cycle of academic
regurgitation. This foul cult of submission. This regime of scholar
workers of the machine has poisoned and violated the chronicles of
critical thinking and academic innovation.
The researches encouraged by the universities and their agents of
normalization (professors) are those that are built upon a priori works.
That makes sense, a research must draw credit from somewhere and show
the ability to cast a new meaning from them or academically sort,
decipher, study and analyze them. The problem occurs when said a priori
masterpieces of a field are exactly the ones that at their own time,
where discarded and humiliated! There are many examples of this,
Nietzsche, Derrida, Schopenhauer and et cetera
Universities and publications are a control system. They filter what
knowledge gets out and how it gets out. But we can't be against it
all, without an assessment and validating mechanism we cant have good
research. Historically researches were self-centered, meaning that if
a scholar had something to prove, he would either prove it
empirically, with logic and arguments or he would fail at it. The
main problem in academic research has always been simultaneous
discoveries and priority in research. Meaning that if five scholars
discovered the same thing at the same time, there would be endless
dispute regarding who did it first and who were to receive the
credit. According to Dr.Merton "The decline in contested claims for
priority in research discoveries can be credited to the increasing
acceptance of the publication of papers in modern academic journals".
But my problem with the current state of this practice is that it has
become quantitative. Nowadays students and scholars are forced to
construct their ideas and their research with and through the previous
works of others instead of giving credit where credit is due. The
universities care more about the quantity of citation rather than
their quality and their importance in the research and in the field.
One could argue that my mindset is akin to that of the The Royal
Society, (formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural
Knowledge) and one wouldn't be so wrong to assume that. The royal
society remained loyal to their initial incentive which was "science
could only move forward through a transparent and open exchange of
ideas backed by experimental evidence".
But I'd like to add to that.
A decentralized knowledge model might just be what we need. In today's
world where internet plays such a crucial role in spreading
information (and of course misinformation) we can escape the tyranny of
the publications and research manuals. This research and publication
model might be best suited for researches that are not acceptable by
the publications and research manuals. The decentralize research model
will not follow any of the common standards but it will follow a given
set of rules. The researches conducted must give credit to their
sources and follow a logical research model where the problem is
explained, questions asked and answers are provided in the end. The
difference will be in what is allowed to be published. Anything! As
long as basic rules of logical scholarly work is followed any research,
article and idea may be published freely by the author. This way,
there will be no need for diplomatic prudence or the common timid tone
in most scholarly work.
I think Gemini can be just the platform for something like this!
I am trying to get a capsule for this very purpose, so if
anyone is interested (or knows a better way) please contact me