Larger Connections

Links to Off-Campus Resources

There are many writers who have been important to my major; however, their work can be found in my bibliography. Here, I would like to make connections with ideas and sources of inspiration that are less likely to receive academic attention.

Wikipedia.org (The Online Encyclopedia)

Jurgen Habermas presents the concept of "the ideal speech community," an idea that is foundational to my senior project. In this community, individuals operate in debate that is uncoerced and unconstrained by lack of time or knowledge. The results of their ideal communication represent "communicative rationality," which, according to Habermas, is rationality itself. He identifies truth and rationality as the results of interpersonal communication rather than in absolute reality or in the rational subject.

While many accept Habermas' thesis that the results of such communication would indeed be ideal, Habermas has received criticism for offering what is perceived as impractical solutions. Even Michel Foucault would reject Habermas' theory insofar as discourse and power pervade all communication, including the "ideal" speech community.

While it may be impossible to achieve the ideal speech community, Wikipedia represents an amazing step towards ideal communication. Wikipedia operates with technology that allows anybody to edit any entry in the encyclopedia. Although this openness prompts some to question the veracity of information on the site, the debate and cross-checking that occurs for each entry is such that all aberrant statements will be eliminated within minutes of being written. More than correcting misinformation, Wikipedia achieves a meaningful level of communicative rationality.

The technological advancements of Wikipedia allow it to approximate many characteristic of the ideal speech community. Each encyclopedia entry that is remotely controversial has an active discussion page. For instance, the entry on Noam Chomsky has approximately 136,000 words of debate written for an entry that is only 10,000 words long (click here to see the debate). Considering that entries are anonymous, time of debate is unlimited, and connection to information is extremely high (by linkage to the internet), the only remaining currency of debate is the power of a strong argument. This method of discussion yields a strong approximation of communicative rationality.

There is one further way that Wikipedia relates to my major. Studying the postmodern epistemology implicit to discourse analysis led me to question several assumptions I have been given about rationality, particularly the linearity of reason. The emphasis on linear reason is an inherited characteristic from our nearly-exclusive use of the text as our choice method of academic exchange. Other methods exist, such as the narrative or other artistic representations. Wikipedia represents a new alternative insofar as it allows for web-like learning rather than linear reading. Although text within an entry must be linear, every term, theory, or etc. is linked to its corresponding entry. As a result, the reader can meander through an unbounded discipline where the information presented is constantly of interest. There certainly are superior characteristics of linear reading, such as clarity in the assessment of a line of reason, but there are clear pedagogical benefits to the web-based learning in Wikipedia.

Gutenberg.org (A Collection of Free eBooks)

An important part of discourse analysis is asking how we construct our knowledge. Under the constructivist epistemological assumptions, one of the prescriptive goals of discourse analysis is to see how we can change our discourses to better approximate the ideal speech community. Improving our access to information is an important element of this endeavor. The Gutenberg Project is one example of how the web is diminishing barriers to information. Most importantly, the Gutenberg Project eliminates many of the obstacles to free exchange of information, keeping our common heritage of knowledge from being privatized.

Google Scholar (A Source for Free Academic Journal Articles)

Google scholar provides many of the same advantages as The Gutenberg Project, but it focuses on academic literature. Although online journal services like JSTOR and Questia have improved access to full-text documents, this has happened at the expense of equal access to information. By assigning a price to academic literature and excluding all non-subscribers, such services effectively make online knowledge private. Moreover, the privatization of online information makes academic study more difficult, creating barriers between researchers and disciplines. Although there is strong argument that privatization of online information is the only way to ensure adequate compensation for authors, such an argument should not apply to research that is more than several years old. The need for sustaining incentives for authors should be balanced with the need to keep academic exchange free and open. By providing the service of indexing and archiving all of the publicly available articles free of charge, Google Scholar represents a large step towards equal an unfettered access to our society's wealth of information.

Theyrule.net (An interactive exploration of corporate ownership)

The web-based representation found in my web portfolio was inspired by other online examples. Theyrule.net takes an issue that is extremely difficult to understand (corporate board ownership as reported by the SEC) and makes it completely accessible for the novice researcher. By using flash technology and free-flowing, web-based representation, Theyrule.net is able to tell a story in several minutes that would take thousands of words to explain in linear text. In a larger sense, Theyrule.net is an example of how web-based thinking provides an alternative representation of reality that is based on assumptions quite different from linear rationality. A short visit to Theyrule.net also makes clear some of the pedagogical advantages of this form of representation.

Visual Thesaurus (A web-based utility to visualize connections between words)

The Visual Thesaurus also utilizes web-based representation to present what has traditionally existed only in the linear-text medium of books. By creating an interactive web of words and their synonyms, the Visual Thesaurus allows for self-guided, creative learning. In many respects, the organization of knowledge in the Visual Thesaurus is much closer to how I conceive of my own mental organization.

Larger Connections

Justin Johnson - Web Portfolio