TheyBlinked

peer review: vanity publishing

2009-03-21T17:13:00.005-05:00

Academic authors, editors, publishers, and distributors are simply not in the business of reaching the masses; they are in the business of reaching other specialists. Academia banks on Intellectual Apartheid; its knowledge economy only rewards specialists publishing to specialists. In such a world, the "influence" of scholarship is not often correlated to real-world effects; it is usually correlated to how well a given work contributes to the specialist knowledge economy. Citation indexes measure reputations among specialists; "impact factor" relates not to real-world impact, but to reputation within the closed system.

...There is an assumption that if something is "published" (meaning published in a conventional, peer-reviewed journal), then it is appropriately circulating and available. Ironically, it may actually mean the opposite. It may be "circulating" among subscribers (a few hundred), but it is simultaneously being kept from the online public (a few billion). It doesn't take a PhD to see how bizarre the math works for the academic knowledge economy. Somehow, the fewer people that know about and use your scholarship, the better it must be. Does that follow? It does within the solipsistic logic of the closed knowledge economy that fuels Intellectual Apartheid.

...there is a well-established IF (impact factor) rating system.

Essentially, scholars whose work is measured in terms of how often their articles are cited within peer-reviewed literature demonstrate not so much the actual worth or impact of their ideas as they demonstrate their fidelity to a closed knowledge economy. Impact factor statistics are really loyalty points for the gentlemen's club: if you impressed other members of the club, you get to stay in it. If you try for other audiences--like the one's loftily imagined in university mission statements--you show disloyalty to the club.

Scholars who let their work be kept from broad dissemination by allowing its access to be tightly restricted through commercial means are complicit with Intellectual Apartheid. It's a shame, really, for such scholars underestimate the value and influence of their work, voluntarily giving up what their work might mean and do if circulating among a public that is literally six or seven orders of magnitude larger in size that the subscriber base of the most used journals.

Academic Evolution

2008-07-05T09:46:00.000-05:00

2008-05-19T18:59:00.001-05:00

Market Stalinism
Remember how we've always been told that free markets and free people go hand in hand? That was a lie. It turns out that the most efficient delivery system for capitalism is actually a communist-style police state, fortressed with American "homeland security" technologies, pumped up with "war on terror" rhetoric. And the global corporations currently earning superprofits from this social experiment are unlikely to be content if the lucrative new market remains confined to cities such as Shenzhen. Like everything else assembled in China with American parts, Police State 2.0 is ready for export to a neighborhood near you.

2008-05-01T19:43:00.003-05:00

"Art is love creating the new world
and justice is love rolling up its
sleeves to heal the old one."
-NT Wright @ Emory University 2008

2008-04-13T07:55:00.005-05:00

Of Aporutopias

The impasse of a utopia in the mode of a to come, an aporutopia is the open to which the determinate is exposed in its living. The to come is that unforeseeable to which all idiosyncratic instantiations invoking an empty signifier expose themselves. Lower case justice in the name of capitalized Justice exposed to the Justice to come. Temporally, the unforeseeable is the future of the forgotten and with the immeasurable demarcates the impossible.

The idiosyncratic instantiate, control and fill the empty signifier. Local, embodied justice acts in the name of Justice. justice is idiosyncratic. This is why humanity will never accomplish Justice. justice is idiosyncratic in that it is only ever present through people and so long as Justice is being served it never arrives.

The particular holds total hegemonic sway over the content of the signifier exposed to the aporutopia. This aporutopian opening is the impossible, what cannot be spoken of, brought into language in the guise of the to come as the absent sense (to use Blanchot's terms) that cannot be designated (as in the series) or learned (as in the singularity), but, as Nancy writes, "makes sense in and by its very absenting." The Democracy to Come, The Coming Community, The Language to Come, even the god that is coming: all aporutopias of considerable interest in recent Continental Philosophy. All designating outcomes we do not understand, that we have part in, but cannot bring about: the black box of creation, the unforeseen and the great forgetting. A locution attempting to speak from one register of the ever receding primal future, that impossible undecidable, that is the meaning of linear temporal existence, of finitude.

The world of human finitude, temporal existence, (or to invoke Heidegger) of dwelling, is about construction. It is about a particular remembering (which is always a way of forgetting). It instantiates, premeditates, orchestrates to bring about a particular construction of home. Creation is different from construction. The very patterns of construction always already bring deconstruction within them. That which cannot be deconstructed is created. Creation is scaled differently. We are exposed to it, but cannot bring it about. It calls to us as the earth and the sky, humanity and their gods. So when Derrida explains that Justice cannot be deconstructed he writes of a Justice whose we are--a Justice to come that is not ours to claim, but to which we are exposed as we instantiate justice.

2008-04-03T15:26:00.002-05:00

winning has no margin of error
serving is nothing but

2008-03-24T07:13:00.003-05:00

i think, perhaps, it would be fitting for us to demand that the same no-bid contractors rebuilding New Orleans be given the contract to build the Bush Embarrassment Library.

2008-03-22T13:42:00.004-05:00

The current situation in Tibet is about an idiosyncratic way of life being exterminated by the militaristic patterns of globalization. That these patterns are being enacted by a communist regime is irrelevant. Nevertheless, it need not be forgotten that the ground for the Sino-globalization that is at work in today's Tibet was cleared by the British Empire a hundred years ago (with Russia, Japan, Nepal and India having bit parts in the ensuing years).

The distance of mountain and wilderness that protects a way of life is what is at stake in Tibet and why the transport networks imposed by China are the advent of the actual material domination of the country. From the highway system that reached Lhasa in the 1950s to the super train finished fifty years later it is the acceleration of people and information that is the domineering cadence that destroys the autonomy of the Tibetan way.

This is progress engineered to unravel the fabric of local identity leaving in its place the public camera, ID card and military checkpoint: the architecture of control that regulates the acceleration of subjugation in the name of national unity, financial opportunity and social stability.

2008-01-26T10:13:00.005-06:00

"No one is waiting anymore for the
REVOLUTION, only for the ACCIDENT,
the breakdown, that will reduce this
unbearable chatter to silence."
-Virilio, Art and Fear

2007-11-04T11:09:00.000-06:00

what are the waypoints on the trail to your dream?

2007-09-23T20:46:00.001-05:00

don't make meaning happen too quickly.

2007-09-11T21:04:00.000-05:00

do what you love.
be content.

you will be happier than you are now.

2007-07-30T13:23:00.000-05:00

Steering is this: empowering leaders, resourcing plans, evaluating outcomes.

The active alignment of money, mandate and measurement is *not* judging tactics or leading execution. Steering is all about alignment. Steering is not making things happen. It is catalyzing the circumstances that allow for things to happen.

Steering is about a certain indirect influence on the future that is always already coming. The public face of steering is strategy embodied in initiatives. One steers initiatives. One executes projects.

One steers through initiatives as one turns a ship with the slight movement of its wheel. One executes projects as one swabs the deck of the ship that turns.

The alchemy of influence on a future to come, on an uncertain arrival, is the art of (time) travel through that which is the auspices of that which works toward that which is to come.

other is this moments:
profit is this
commerce is this
wealth is this
execution is this

...let us rejoice and be glad in it...

2007-07-10T20:42:00.000-05:00

friends, enemies and strangers indifferent: grace and peace from this strange compression. it has been a long time since this space has seen an update. there are many reasons. some of it is simply the dissemination of my online attention. if you need more of me you can follow my twitter and delicious or find me in the social networks.

the new smashing pumpkins is worthy of a listen (i bought the yellow Best Buy edition with the "Death From Above" bonus track... the six edition release was an ingenious move {6 colors + book edition}: an album like this is bought by old fans first and having the collectors buying multiples on day one is a nice momentum boost). props to my local scene: the beautiful new polyphonic spree is a continuation of the aural prozac that began with odes to the sun and other fine things in the early days of this century. and of course a bit of justice can't hurt.

as for what you might enjoy reading... caputo and vattimo have teamed up for a happy little essay/interview book called after the death of god. hans kung has f-i-n-a-l-l-y released his third volume in the abrahamic faiths trilogy: islam. a glorious tome. helene cixous' stigmata has been the air i breath since the early spring.

as for visual media: i eagerly await the next seasons of rome, the sopranos and the simpsons (August!). the night of the white pants was quirky and unexpected. the initial bits of une vieille maîtresse that catherine breillat shared in the mountains last month were visually enchanting: i await a commercial print without the unexpected difficulties of the burn of the festival print that presented the unnavigable technical difficulties in june. catherine was in the running for the palm at cannes this year, btw.

in other news: em and kaus are moving to ireland. trev is still saving the world. i am seriously contemplating steps toward massive simplification. oh, and i am overcommitted.

a thought that i texted to bryan yesterday from a journal entry from the day before that became the fodder for an interesting morning of conversation:

------ SMS Text ------
To: 1214-766-xxxx
Sent: Jul 9, 2007 1:22 PM
Subject: One is nothing.

One is nothing. It takes everything at once for one to be. Being for others
is the active state of being singular plural.

i expanded it a little further in an email to myself later in the day:

Dan Hughes to Dan.Hughes
Jul 9 (1 day ago) 

One is nothing. It takes everything at once for one to be. Being for
others is the active state of being singular plural. It is the
conditional state of being; of human being. Happening behind our
backs, without our consent, always already underway life lives.

i am the all, but the all is not me. the allusions to bonhoeffer, nancy and schirmacher are clear. what is less clear is where it goes next.

peace.

2007-06-30T08:25:00.000-05:00

Aporutopia � A neologism for the undecidable content of a utopia in the mode of a to-come. An aporutopia is an undeconstructible opening. The word is a conjunction of "aporia" and "utopia." Aporutopias are an area of great interest in Continental Philosophy appearing as, "The Democracy to Come," "The Coming Community," "The Language to Come," etc.

2007-05-12T08:24:00.000-05:00

profit is this: finding, building or buying something that puts out more than one puts in.

commerce is this: sustainably scaling the production of profit through core growth, related offerings or new markets.

wealth is this: taking profit off the table and transforming it into sustainable vehicles that store, grow and enable the use of profit as power over time.

2007-05-02T13:46:00.000-05:00

2007-04-25T10:31:00.000-05:00

a blogger in Paris asked The Shins to go on a walk with him.

this amazing footage came from that walk.

i l o v e t h i s.

the music, the people, the framing (i love the guy sitting alone in the cafe in part 1, the table level shot at the end of part 2)...

be inspired.

2007-04-25T09:31:00.000-05:00

second earth.
this is important.

(though not as important as first earth.)

2007-04-24T12:44:00.000-05:00

you know, RSS is all about consuming more efficiently.

i am so tired of efficiently.

i want to consume less and eat really well.

2007-04-11T09:30:00.000-05:00

what you forget is as important as what you remember.
forget well!

2007-04-08T09:31:00.000-05:00

Montparnasse
2 April 2007

we are pilgrims in paris.
we come to fulfill a promise
("next year in jerusalem!")
together.
we walk in procession
down rue vielle du temple.

arriving (for pilgrims indeed arrive, again and again they arrive)
we are exhorted in the face of death:
"Live Well!"

(he was at home in the arms of his love
knowing and contented.)

his voice, his image
circulates person-to-person among the gathered.
i want to whisper, "body of christ" as the machine passes through my hands.
another shares him with me,
splayed earbuds our connection
as we do this in memory of him.

we are again in flight. together.
in flight from the tomb of memory.
in flight to a proximity that is now one-sided.

with beckett and beauvoir we find baudrillard.
a tree on a slab and a note.
"L'existence n'est pas tout. C'est m�me la moindre des choses."
the teacher ventriloquist gloats.

flowers. words. uncorked bottle. lit cigarette.
the theatre of death a one man show we stumble to enact together.
tears. backs. adieu.

2007-03-06T14:03:00.000-06:00

jean baudrillard has died.

2007-02-20T10:55:00.001-06:00

execution is this: vision, plans, leaders, specialists, measurements.
success is choreographing these to bring an outcome into the world.

2007-01-30T16:23:00.001-06:00

everything good comes with local flavor.
passion has a geography.
changing the world always starts and ends somewhere.

where one is.