There is a gulf between the needs of industry writers and the needs of researchers and academics. One requires very orderly processes of feedback and comments, while the other is a messy connectivism melee of ideas and attribution.
I still recall a drawing of a 16th century scholar (though cannot find it) who has several books held up by mechanisms, cross referencing and comparing the texts. I’m reminded of my own multi-monitor display, and wonder how augmented reality and future devices will change even that modal paradigm.
The closest in terms of present-day systems to this aspiration of connectivity in knowledge remains Wikipedia, though the links (clicking text which changes everything) often hide the connections as much as they provide ways between ideas. Ted Nelson’s Project Xanadu set out to realize the connections in a spatial way, though the system as envisioned was never completed. Giorgio Guzzetta’s proposal for this year’s THATCamp MLA talked of a scholarly operating system, citing the various tools and programs that would allow tweaking and cajoling Linux tools and systems into the specialized needs of academia, and more specifically the humanities. These tools are constantly moving, their combination volatile and their practicality at least uncertain. The primary technologies I currently use are Microsoft Word, Mendeley Desktop manager (which does a great job of helping manage citations and PDFs/Notes), but I (and most others) still feel there should be something more.
I’d like to be a part of a session that addresses these deeply embedded dissatisfaction with the ways that technology supports the fundamental process of writing and scholarship. Who is best suited to standardizing these solutions, who has the time and capabilities, and further, since we are professionals, what would we be willing to do to show there is a market?
Please weigh in on the comments, and I’d be happy to combine talk of semantic web, real-time collaboration tools with the existing applications and workflows.
Academic writing, and writing in general, is changing, not only because of the use of digital means, but substantially because of it. Is not only about connections, I think, although connecting ideas and people is part of it. Is the writing process itself that is changing. Think for instance about Jim Brown’s course who seeks to “encourage students to view writing as something more than words on the page (or even words on the screen)” and to make students “study the similarities and differences between the composition of computer programs and the composition of text”. Future -if not present already – writing, even academic, in my opinion, will not be just writing, will be a mixture of writing and coding. In some sense is going to be “constantly moving” and at risk of being volatile, if we don’t find alternatives to the current way of doing it.
In my proposal I was trying to combine together the need to code with the need to write (which is still very important in academia, of course). I think this is an issue that need to be addressed, and I am not sure that your approach is taking it into account.
I am not saying this because I want to publicize my proposal over yours. In fact, I think we should combine them. It could be a very interesting discussion.