Scholarly Skywriting is a term coined by cognitive scientist Stevan Harnad describing the combination of multiple email and a topic threaded web archive such as a newsgroup, electronic mailing list, hypermail, netnews or Internet forum, linked and sortable by date, author, or subject-heading threads. The name derives from the idea that texts can be written in the "sky" (via multiple email and a web archive) for all to see ("skyreading") and all to add their own comments to ("skywriting").
After the property of being online and read/writable by all, the most important property of Scholarly Skywriting is "quote/commentary": cut and pasting the target passages of a text followed by a commentary focussed specifically on the excerpt. The quote/commentary can be multiply embedded, providing a new dimension to hyperlinking.
Harnad suggests that scholarly skywriting with quote/commentary has revived the oral tradition in the online age, making it possible to have a conversation-like dialogue with a text (even a text with a deceased author) that fully utilizes the interactive cognitive capacities of the brain that evolved with language. In his view, writing systems provided permanent records missing from oral exchanges at the price of slowing the cognitive interaction to a tempo that is out of phase with the potential speed and power of interdigitating thought to which the brain is specifically adapted. Harnad claims scholarly skywriting is significant because it combines the advantages of oral and written communication, restoring the synchronous, bilateral and interactive nature of the oral tradition with the permanence of the written tradition.
Student Skywriting is Scholarly Skywriting done in a teaching/learning context.
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References
- Stevan Harnad (1990) Scholarly Skywriting and the Prepublication Continuum of Scientific Inquiry [reprinted in Current Contents 45: 9-13, November 11 1991]. Psychological Science 1:342-343.
- Stevan Harnad (1991) Post-Gutenberg Galaxy: The Fourth Revolution in the Means of Production of Knowledge. Public-Access Computer Systems Review. (also reprinted in PACS Annual Review Volume 2 1992; and in R. D. Mason (ed.) Computer Conferencing: The Last Word. Beach Holme Publishers, 1992; and in: M. Strangelove & D. Kovacs: Directory of Electronic Journals, Newsletters, and Academic Discussion Lists (A. Okerson, ed), 2nd edition. Washington, DC, Association of Research Libraries, Office of Scientific & Academic Publishing, 1992); and in Hungarian translation in REPLIKA 1994; and in Japanese in Research and Development of Scholarly Information Dissemination Systems 1994-1995.
- Stevan Harnad (1995) Interactive Cognition: Exploring the Potential of Electronic Quote/Commenting, in Gorayska, B. and Mey, J.L., Eds. Cognitive Technology: In Search of a Humane Interface, pages pp. 397–414. Elsevier.
- Stevan Harnad (1999) The Future of Scholarly Skywriting. In: i in the Sky: Visions of the information future, 216-218. Aslib/IMI.
- Stevan Harnad (2003) Back to the Oral Tradition Through Skywriting at the Speed of Thought. Interdisciplines. (2004) Retour à la tradition orale: écrire dans le ciel à la vitesse de la pensée. Dans: Salaün, Jean-Michel & Vendendorpe, Christian (réd.). Le défis de la publication sur le web: hyperlectures, cybertextes et méta-éditions. Presses de l'enssib.
- Stevan Harnad (2006) Distributed Processes, Distributed Cognizers and Collaborative Cognition. Pragmatics and Cognition.
- Light, Paul and Light, Vivienne and Nesbitt, Emma and Harnad, Stevan (2000) Up for Debate: CMC as a support for course related discussion in a campus university setting, in Joiner, R., Eds. Rethinking Collaborative Learning. London: Routledge.
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