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.