Citizendium Blog

One thing Andrew Keen said near the end of that video gave me pause.  He said something similar in his book, and it is something I have been thinking about, idly, for years.  It is that the Internet is making us more selfish, or more self-centered.  I have thought for a long time that we don’t talk together face-to-face so much anymore — or, I am honest enough to admit that I don’t.  I don’t see my friends as much.  Partly I’m sure that’s because I’ve gotten busier, and now we have a baby.  But I think we are becoming more self-centered as a society.  While I am an individualist in many ways, I also believe we are social and political animals, and as another gentleman said in the video, we are not fully human if we are cut off from others.

And I have to say that my talking to you on this blog does not count as full-blooded social relations!  Should I be telling this to a friend?  Well, I can speak to more people this way, and have a bigger impact.  But in doing so am I ignoring a subtle negative impact that the medium has on me?

Our lives would be very sad and weak indeed if all of our social relations were mediated by the Internet.  I think perhaps we are already seeing what this might look like among young people, whose social lives are mediated by FaceBook (or the social networking website du jour) and texting, who complain that there isn’t dating any longer, who more often “hook up” rather than develop serious relationships.

In our radical new digital world, who or what will teach us again how to spend and enjoy time together face to face –especially those of us who do not go to church, or are not in school, and otherwise have few opportunities for truly meaningful social interaction?

I have absolutely loved the PBS Jane Austen series.  (Anybody agree?  I’m so disappointed that it’s over.  That Pride and Prejudice miniseries, from the 1990s, is absolutely magnificent.)  While I have little romantic nostalgia for early 19th century manners and society — well, it would be nice if some of that politeness were back in style – I was struck by how people would pass the time, hours of it, in conversation with friends and family.  That is charming.  I suspect that serious face-to-face conversation makes us better and more human.  It seems to me that we are now much more perfunctory in our communication.

Of course, there is an old complaint that television is ruining the arts of conversation and friendship.  But the participatory Internet makes the problem worse, because it gives us an outlet for social relations, but it is by its nature a self-centered and self-directed outlet, and it is not fully embodied.  This is a problem.

Now, I love self-determination and self-actualization as much as anyone.  I come from nonconformist Protestant stock, but I’m a free-thinking philosopher; I’m also a Reedie, an Alaskan, and an American.  I remember my old 11th grade chemistry teacher telling me the platitude, “Be true to yourself for you are your own best friend.”  I was already taking that seriously.  This is why it is easy for me to work online for small, risky companies, buck prevailing Internet trends, not use my Ph.D. in philosophy to get an academic job, leave trendy Silicon Valley for a small Ohio town, etc.  I am so far off the beaten track, I don’t even know where the track is anymore.  I say all that to establish my credentials as a nonconformist and iconoclast.  My life has been extremely self-directed, and perhaps that is why I am drawn to the Internet: you can do what you want, when you want.  Freedom and independence are prized online.

I don’t pretend to be terribly unusual in my independence.  There are many other people, especially online, who are equally independent, in all sorts of ways.  They too are very self-directed.  The problem for us is that in being so self-directed, when we converse online, we choose the topics we’re interested in, we choose who to listen to, we often choose who hears us — and this all happens without the many benefits of being there in real time, situated and embodied with other people.

Can we still have friendships, real friendships, if we spend so much of our free time this way?

Especially those of us who work online (and increasingly, I suspect, all of us will, one way or another), and who want to keep conversation and face-to-face, full-bodied friendship alive, will have to choose to maintain friendships offline.

Perhaps we should start 21st century salons, offline, where many different people come together, physically, to talk, with our mouths, where we do not all necessarily agree, but where we practice the virtues of civility that make it possible for people who disagree to remain friends.

A message posted to Citizendium-L and Citizendium-Editors. 

All,

This is just an announcement which I hope to follow up on in the next few months.

I feel confident that, if I focus on fundraising for the project, I can get enough to make the project independent. Especially with a baby, I think my little family would be happier with something steadier; but please don’t worry about us, we’ve got enough from various sources to live on for a half year or more, and more funds appear as if magically from various sources.

So, as much as I would like to remain wholly independent, I actually think that it might be a good idea if I try to affiliate myself personally in some way with a university.

I mention this to you in part because I want to forestall a certain worry or criticism. You might think my affiliating myself and my work with a university might be seen as affiliating the Citizendium with that institution. That is not the case. Even if I am affiliated with a university, that wouldn’t mean that CZ will be as well. As one Executive Committee member said, editors of most academic journals are affiliated at universities, but the journals themselves are independent of the university.

In addition to active interest from one Big Ten university, I have another faculty friend at major west coast university who wants me to apply for an open faculty position there. This interest from friends is what gave me the idea. The field of online knowledge communities (or allied topics) is an enormous “growth” field, poised to really take off (as I thought it would — if you examine the original announcement of CZ), and I suspect I would have no trouble getting some nice research position at a good university. Basically, I doubt I would have to do much more than I’m already doing — I’d just be doing it under the aegis of a university, perhaps at a research center.

I think that if I simply send out notes to various departments and university centers, I might be able to generate some interest. But I suspect some interested parties might already be on the CZ lists. For the sake of persons who might wish to forward this to decisionmakers, I should say what I think I could offer a university:

• I’ve been called a “thought leader” in my field — online knowledge communities, the philosophy of the Internet, collaboration. I was “chief architect” of both Wikipedia and the Citizendium, having been involved in a wide variety of other Internet projects since the mid-90s, and as an active speaker and writer. I also fully intend to start at least one more major project after Citizendium (see http://www.textop.org/). A case can be made that such organizational and editorial naturally work belongs at universities.
• I would be willing to teach one course per term (I’d prefer one per year, though — teaching always gobbles up all available time). While I have taught a wide variety of philosophy courses since 1992 (intro, ethics, logic, law, epistemology, others), probably the courses an employer would be interested in would have something to do with the philosophy, politics, or ethics of the Internet or about online knowledge communities. (In grad school my specializations were epistemology and early modern.)
• I would of course be willing to do most of my work on campus and to hold office hours, and in other respects be an active part of the university community.
• I can help direct very innovative software projects that support the project(s) I am involved in. It would be a feather in the cap of a university to be the home of open source software projects for next-generation knowledge communities.
• I would be willing to supervise a few student projects.
• I would be willing to participate in fund-raising for any research center with which I might be affiliated.

–Larry

P.S. Still hard at work on the license essay (”dissertation”), 22 detailed pages and counting. I think I see the light at the end of the tunnel…dimly. The decision isn’t getting any easier as I proceed, either.

—–
Lawrence M. Sanger, Ph.D. | http://www.larrysanger.org/
Editor-in-Chief, Citizendium | http://www.citizendium.org/
sanger@citizendium.org

I needed a break, and a recent e-mail inspired this.  It has nothing whatsoever to do with the Citizendium.  No, really, it doesn’t!

Various cranks and nuts have written me over the years, just as they often write many academics. Academics usually ignore them. When I have (perhaps imprudently) written them back, I’ve discovered a certain pattern.

(1) The crank claims to have special, difficult understanding of complicated matters, something that constitutes a “discovery.” Usually, the “discovery” involves a thorough misunderstanding of some easily discredited theory, or else a complete system of thought developed out of whole cloth, but which bears little interesting relationship to anything in the history of ideas.

(2) The crank has completely irrational contempt or disrespect for the experts in the field. He (almost always it’s a he) also has contempt for traditional scholarship and methods. This is virtually invariable as a feature.

(3) The crank, ironically enough, has an obvious desire to be respected by those experts, and has no small amount of bitterness owing to the lack of notice, much less respect, experts have paid his “discovery.”

(4) Frequently, the crank also believes he has some special gift, method, or other way of knowing, which is rare, and which renders skoolin’ unnecessary or beneath him.  In fact, however, he is usually prone to the simplest of errors; it’s as if he has turned off all of his self-critical faculties.  See this fascinating article: “One puzzling aspect of our results is how the incompetent fail, through life experience, to learn that they are unskilled.”

(5) The crank usually has some, but not a huge amount, of higher education–might have a bachelor’s degree, but often in a field outside of his own. E.g., a philosophy crank might have have majored in physics or business 30 years ago.

(6) For whatever reason, a lot of cranks seem to be older, over 30 and often over 50 or 60. I’m not sure why this is the case. Perhaps the older you get, the harder it is to recognize your own crankishness. (Scary thought.)  But there are some young ones.

I’m just a crank myself when it comes to theorizing about cranks, I suppose…