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Authority Zen: Multiple Voices Necessary, So Write Online!
Fri, 11/13/2009 - 13:45 — CAHeidelberger
Lincoln (1997) tells me all texts are partial. To even approach telling the whole story, we need multiple voices.
This reminds me of a post provoked by my reading of Ellis last month. We cannot read/listen/attend to several voices at once, but online text removes some of the filters between readers and sources. Online, the source material is only a click away, not even the flip of a book page. The online format connects our readers more quickly to the other voices who inform what we write. Hyperlinks tie us, the authors, more immediately to those sources: my book stands alone on a shelf, but my web page has all those other authors right there, just beneath the surface, just waiting to explode on top of my words at the flick of a finger.
The online format also removes our gatekeeping authority over which voices appear in our text. New voices we never encountered or did not want to encounter can add themselves to the text, challenging the integrity of my original intent, forcing me to acknowledge those alternate points of view.
These thoughts apply equally in the realm of social knowledge management in the blogosphere. Knowledge no longer comes from one authority. We build it together. We make connections. The artifacts of our shared knowledge bear the imprint of their social genesis in the hyperlinks and comments and other echoes of different voices, always there, always available, always amendable and appendable.
Sharing and building knowledge online, whether a doctoral dissertation or a community-based SKM effort, flattens hierarchy and promotes a more democratic wisdom than can be achieved with static knowledge technologies like books and newspapers.
Hmm... so do we gain authority by giving it up?
This reminds me of a post provoked by my reading of Ellis last month. We cannot read/listen/attend to several voices at once, but online text removes some of the filters between readers and sources. Online, the source material is only a click away, not even the flip of a book page. The online format connects our readers more quickly to the other voices who inform what we write. Hyperlinks tie us, the authors, more immediately to those sources: my book stands alone on a shelf, but my web page has all those other authors right there, just beneath the surface, just waiting to explode on top of my words at the flick of a finger.
The online format also removes our gatekeeping authority over which voices appear in our text. New voices we never encountered or did not want to encounter can add themselves to the text, challenging the integrity of my original intent, forcing me to acknowledge those alternate points of view.
These thoughts apply equally in the realm of social knowledge management in the blogosphere. Knowledge no longer comes from one authority. We build it together. We make connections. The artifacts of our shared knowledge bear the imprint of their social genesis in the hyperlinks and comments and other echoes of different voices, always there, always available, always amendable and appendable.
Sharing and building knowledge online, whether a doctoral dissertation or a community-based SKM effort, flattens hierarchy and promotes a more democratic wisdom than can be achieved with static knowledge technologies like books and newspapers.
Hmm... so do we gain authority by giving it up?
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