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I thank dr. France and for this kind
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introduction
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it's a pleasure to be here addressing so
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challenging and audience but since I
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have only a short time I must plunge
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directly into the matter at hand I
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apologize for not speaking German
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unfortunately my education was lacking
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in that respect
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I shall argue tonight that historical
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forces of varying sizes and timescales
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have combined to create what appears to
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be a sudden crisis in the nature of
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expert knowledge while some of these
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forces are new others are quite old as a
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result their conjuncture is difficult to
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interpret by cataloguing these forces
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carefully and specifying their
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counterpoint with one another I aim at a
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serious analysis of the general
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phenomenon those of you who know my work
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will recognize my usual
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strategy which is to make a perceptual
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argument I shall decompose the present
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into the intersection of several
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different processes having varying
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temporal character and I will then use
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that decomposition to propose possible
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points of intervention
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the first section however is an
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important caveat I am NOT going to talk
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about any current revolution in
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knowledge because there is no current
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revolution in knowledge the idea that we
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are in a particularly revolutionary
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period is an ideology of various groups
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in the knowledge world at this moment
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groups that wish to Stampede or force
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others into supporting their particular
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recipe for the future a recipe which has
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little to do with knowledge and much to
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do with capitalism within academia
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itself the mania for innovation
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creativity and excellence derives from
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the mechanical and inappropriate
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application of management ideologies to
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intellectual life to be sure
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technological advance is extraordinarily
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rapid at the moment but the events of
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basic science is much slower in field
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after field we are today living off the
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basic science of
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the past filling in the footnotes and
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deriving the technological implications
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of theories like quantum mechanics plate
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tectonics the new evolutionary synthesis
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and cultural relativism all of which
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date from the first half of the 20th
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century in my view there has been no
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recent advance in basic research that
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compares with the discoveries of the
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period from 1870 to 1950 nor is
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technological change actually much
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faster than in the past in broadcast
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media in personal communications and in
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expert knowledge practices there have
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been revolutions with monotonous
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regularity since the Napoleonic era let
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me review the record for
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english-language sources alone in
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broadcast media there were the new elite
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reviews in the 1820s circulating
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libraries in the 1850s mass literacy
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dime novels and newspapers in the 1880s
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radio in the 1920s television in the
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1950s in the internet in the 1990s in
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personal communications there were the
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penny post and telegraph in the 1880s
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the telephone in 1890s Universal
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telephone service and mass long-distance
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telephony in the 1950s cell phones by
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the 1980s and packet data cell service
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in the 2000s as for knowledge tools the
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mid 19th century saw a rapid expansion
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of periodicals abstracting and indexing
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the late 19th century brought subject
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classified libraries the Hollerith
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punched card technology modern academic
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specialties and crowd-sourced
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expert projects like the oxford english
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dictionary the early 20th century
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brought national library catalogs and
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comprehensive periodical collection data
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the 1930s brought inferential statistics
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the 1940s brought programmable computers
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microfilm and computerized concordance
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indexes the 1970s brought keyword
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indexing the 1980s brought computer
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searchable reference tools and the 2000s
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brought mass distribution of periodicals
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and of Google
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scholar in summary broad broad cast
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communications personal communications
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and expert knowledge tools have
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developed so rapidly that in no time in
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the last 200 years could a knowledge
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expert possibly have lived a full career
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without experiencing one or more
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revolutions in all three of these areas
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our experience today is not in the least
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unusual now to be sure scholars from all
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walks in the past have felt that their
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revolutions were the most revolutionary
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ever but this could be true only if the
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changes were exponential with
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ever-increasing slopes and of course one
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can easily produce apparent statistical
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evidence of this exponential 'ti by
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Counting things like numbers of books
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published numbers of articles written
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numbers of internet conversations but
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these counts are completely meaningless
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thus for example the books we published
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today are much less likely to be read
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than were the books of our teachers our
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articles contain work that no one would
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have bothered to publish 50 years ago
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and our internet conversations are
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simply replacing conversations that used
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to take place in the corridor under
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conditions of continuous transformation
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counting such previous units of analysis
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will always show exponential expansion
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but that expansion is made meaningless
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by the very tools that have turned
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earlier grand achievements into
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commodified simplicity's today for many
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of us can distal programs are the most
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obvious example of this destructive
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force of commodification they have
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created not more science but more
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foolishness in short today's publication
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today's explosion of publishing means
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nothing whatsoever in terms of real
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intellectual achievement now why we all
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believe in this Mirage of achievement is
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an interesting topic but it must wait
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for another talk here I will rather
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discuss the larger flows in our expert
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knowledge and show how these are cross
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cut by cyclical patterns and one-time
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changes producing the strange
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conjuncture that we face today so that
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was the first bit
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no revolution second bit what are the
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long flows of change I shall consider
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first the long term changes under four
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basic headings the objects of knowing
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the subjects of knowing the results of
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knowing and the activities of knowing
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objects subjects results activities I
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choose this non Conte and order because
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the most important of these four is not
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knowledge but knowing we define
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excellent knowledge as whatever it is
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that it is that is produced by EXO
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excellent knowing we do not define
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excellent knowing that's whatever kind
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of knowing it is that produces knowledge
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that seems excellent to non experts and
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surely the assertion that knowing
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defines knowledge rather than the other
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way around is an assertion I do not need
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to defend in the land of Immanuel Kant
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filled him for Humboldt and they applaud
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phone rohnke so to begin with the
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objects of knowing what is known two
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major changes seem central in the last
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half century the first is a shift from a
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content of knowledge that is mainly
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about the natural world the one that is
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equally or more detailed but about the
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social world now of course the history
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of social knowledge of censuses and tax
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rolls is a long one but truly effective
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censuses and taxing systems are
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creations of the 19th and 20th centuries
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perhaps more important the massive
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expansion of economies from the late
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19th century onward has been completed
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by an equally massive expansion in
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financial records and the subsequent
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expansion of the welfare state required
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a similarly massive expansion in
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knowledge about welfare recipients more
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over the second half of the 20th century
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brought the expansion of consumer credit
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and of a cashless consumption system
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based on continuously collected
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information about financial transfers
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while much of this data was always
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passively collected we now have the
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computer memories and algorithmic means
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to process it in conclusion to a large
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extent
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is now ourselves that we know the second
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great change is related to this one as I
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shall argue at length more at more
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length shortly our desire to know more
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and more has led us to a perpetual
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pursuit of shortcuts to knowing most
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especially to the creation of
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commodities that can know things for us
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summaries guidebooks calculators expert
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systems and so on but as we invent these
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new commodities we simply increase our
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desire for detail this ratchet mechanism
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results in a steady increase in the
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detail and particularity of the total of
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things that are in some sense known now
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to be sure there has always been
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cognitive overload the great Renaissance
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humanists wrote hundreds of thousands of
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letters after all but there is an
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immense increase in the detail of what
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we know about certain objects of
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knowledge which results in the
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increasing decomposition of those very
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objects into smaller and smaller objects
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thus the two great changes in the object
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of our knowledge are first that it is
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much more ourselves in our social life
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that we know and the second that the
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race between desire for knowledge and
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commodification of knowledge steadily
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decomposes the objects of our knowledge
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into smaller and smaller objects now
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these changes in the things that we know
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the object of knowing have been
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complemented by changes in the
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subjective knowing the knower who knows
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there are three important trends here
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the first isn't rise of what I shall
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call the social knower in the 19th
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century expert knowledge was artisanal
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there were scholarly societies but they
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met seldom even in the most advanced
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countries there were only a handful of
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great libraries a few major museums a
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few research hospitals and perhaps half
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a dozen non university research
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institutions scholars worked mainly
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alone the 20th century knower became
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much more social in part this reflected
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the advancing numbers of corporate
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research
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institutions the growth of industrial
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laboratories and the university's
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adoption of the departmental structure
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brought intensive substantive discussion
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into everyday scholarly life
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collaborative work consequently spread
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through the sciences other than
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mathematics by the mid twentieth century
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and even into the social sciences as
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well in the humanities and the
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humanistic Social Sciences the
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socializing of the knower has happened
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more slowly but even in these most
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artisanal of fields there emerged in the
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20th century the diffuse organizational
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form known as the discipline which
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linked researchers in loose communities
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quite unlike the large research
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organization with its formal division of
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labor and its linear operating structure
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but the Disciplinary form is a social
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form nonetheless an important
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correlative trend is the increasing
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dominance of social knowing among our
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students at least in the United States
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students increasingly prefer group based
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and supportive learning environments
284
00:12:12,840 --> 00:12:14,730
over individualistic and competitive
285
00:12:14,730 --> 00:12:17,790
ones this phenomenon parallels the
286
00:12:17,790 --> 00:12:19,700
changes in the expert knowledge world
287
00:12:19,700 --> 00:12:22,460
perhaps more important demographic
288
00:12:22,460 --> 00:12:24,660
succession will eventually spread it
289
00:12:24,660 --> 00:12:27,750
throughout the academic community now
290
00:12:27,750 --> 00:12:29,790
although this trend seems new it is
291
00:12:29,790 --> 00:12:31,380
worth remembering that John Dewey
292
00:12:31,380 --> 00:12:33,600
promoted social knowing very very
293
00:12:33,600 --> 00:12:35,790
strongly in the beginning of the 20th
294
00:12:35,790 --> 00:12:38,280
century and yet the culture drew back
295
00:12:38,280 --> 00:12:40,470
from that towards tracking excellence
296
00:12:40,470 --> 00:12:42,960
individualism and competition in the
297
00:12:42,960 --> 00:12:46,500
1950s so there may be a cyclical quality
298
00:12:46,500 --> 00:12:49,230
to this first aspect of change in the
299
00:12:49,230 --> 00:12:51,390
subject of knowledge the rise of the
300
00:12:51,390 --> 00:12:54,900
social knower now the second great
301
00:12:54,900 --> 00:12:56,990
change in the knower is the emergence of
302
00:12:56,990 --> 00:12:59,670
organizations as subjects of knowledge
303
00:12:59,670 --> 00:13:03,030
as things that know things in the
304
00:13:03,030 --> 00:13:05,130
professions for example solo practice
305
00:13:05,130 --> 00:13:07,860
has drastically declined professional
306
00:13:07,860 --> 00:13:10,560
life is dominated by large usually multi
307
00:13:10,560 --> 00:13:13,020
professional organizations the Medical
308
00:13:13,020 --> 00:13:15,600
Center the architectural and design for
309
00:13:15,600 --> 00:13:18,220
the accountancy and consulting firm
310
00:13:18,220 --> 00:13:21,290
applied Social Research is similarly the
311
00:13:21,290 --> 00:13:23,300
province of interdisciplinary teams of
312
00:13:23,300 --> 00:13:25,850
economists physicians nurses social
313
00:13:25,850 --> 00:13:30,110
workers sociologists and so on the forms
314
00:13:30,110 --> 00:13:32,029
of knowledge are actually encoded into
315
00:13:32,029 --> 00:13:33,589
the divisions of labor in such
316
00:13:33,589 --> 00:13:36,170
organizations and thus the organizations
317
00:13:36,170 --> 00:13:38,660
themselves are knowers as much as are
318
00:13:38,660 --> 00:13:41,899
the professionals within them the modern
319
00:13:41,899 --> 00:13:43,970
hospital illustrates this phenomenon
320
00:13:43,970 --> 00:13:45,860
through its complex structuring of care
321
00:13:45,860 --> 00:13:48,140
which is familiar to anyone who has
322
00:13:48,140 --> 00:13:50,839
experienced the Kafka esque world of
323
00:13:50,839 --> 00:13:54,350
modern medicine such organizational
324
00:13:54,350 --> 00:13:56,959
knowers often claim to own the knowledge
325
00:13:56,959 --> 00:13:59,360
of their workers as is evident in
326
00:13:59,360 --> 00:14:02,330
contract clauses which enjoined non
327
00:14:02,330 --> 00:14:04,880
competition on engineers who resign from
328
00:14:04,880 --> 00:14:06,950
the firm while they're in possession of
329
00:14:06,950 --> 00:14:09,110
what the firm calls proprietary
330
00:14:09,110 --> 00:14:12,560
knowledge but if much of the knowledge
331
00:14:12,560 --> 00:14:14,420
of the modern world actually resides
332
00:14:14,420 --> 00:14:16,790
implicitly in the routines techniques
333
00:14:16,790 --> 00:14:19,040
and divisions of labor of knowledge
334
00:14:19,040 --> 00:14:22,430
organizations even more of it resides in
335
00:14:22,430 --> 00:14:25,250
commodities this is indeed the third
336
00:14:25,250 --> 00:14:27,920
great change in the modern knower it is
337
00:14:27,920 --> 00:14:32,120
more often a thing than a person like
338
00:14:32,120 --> 00:14:33,649
several of the other trends discussed
339
00:14:33,649 --> 00:14:35,600
earlier commodification of knowledge has
340
00:14:35,600 --> 00:14:37,839
been common for at least two centuries
341
00:14:37,839 --> 00:14:40,700
the stethoscope was once an advanced
342
00:14:40,700 --> 00:14:43,399
medical tool you reserved for physicians
343
00:14:43,399 --> 00:14:47,570
now practical nurses use it students no
344
00:14:47,570 --> 00:14:49,880
longer multiple memorise arithmetic
345
00:14:49,880 --> 00:14:52,690
tables they push buttons on calculators
346
00:14:52,690 --> 00:14:54,829
engineers no longer puzzle over
347
00:14:54,829 --> 00:14:57,350
difficult integrals they use numerical
348
00:14:57,350 --> 00:15:01,010
approximator instead indeed the 20th
349
00:15:01,010 --> 00:15:03,050
century has brought entire systems of
350
00:15:03,050 --> 00:15:05,750
commodity expertise inferential
351
00:15:05,750 --> 00:15:08,270
statistics were commodified and two
352
00:15:08,270 --> 00:15:11,450
formulas usable by novices within 20
353
00:15:11,450 --> 00:15:13,640
years of their discovery in the 1920s
354
00:15:13,640 --> 00:15:16,970
and by the 1970s they were embodied in
355
00:15:16,970 --> 00:15:18,770
computer programs that made them easily
356
00:15:18,770 --> 00:15:21,079
accessible to people who were completely
357
00:15:21,079 --> 00:15:22,820
ignorant of the mathematics that
358
00:15:22,820 --> 00:15:25,940
justifies them there are thus three
359
00:15:25,940 --> 00:15:27,860
great changes in the knower to
360
00:15:27,860 --> 00:15:29,810
complement the two in the
361
00:15:29,810 --> 00:15:32,360
the rise of the social knower which as
362
00:15:32,360 --> 00:15:34,820
I've said may be cyclical but seems
363
00:15:34,820 --> 00:15:37,610
currently on the upswing the rise of
364
00:15:37,610 --> 00:15:39,980
organizations of Noah as knowers which
365
00:15:39,980 --> 00:15:41,720
is steadily increasing since World War
366
00:15:41,720 --> 00:15:44,060
two and the increasing importance of
367
00:15:44,060 --> 00:15:46,220
things as knowers which has been a
368
00:15:46,220 --> 00:15:54,410
steady trend for at least 200 years as
369
00:15:54,410 --> 00:15:56,570
for knowledge itself I move on now to
370
00:15:56,570 --> 00:15:59,680
knowledge itself the result of knowing
371
00:15:59,680 --> 00:16:03,050
there's one major change a change not in
372
00:16:03,050 --> 00:16:05,120
the quantity of things known but rather
373
00:16:05,120 --> 00:16:07,670
in their character knowledge is
374
00:16:07,670 --> 00:16:10,490
increasingly commodity like it's not a
375
00:16:10,490 --> 00:16:14,570
process but a result now a part of this
376
00:16:14,570 --> 00:16:16,340
change arises from the use of the word
377
00:16:16,340 --> 00:16:19,190
knowledge to denote the vast quantities
378
00:16:19,190 --> 00:16:21,110
of random facts that our society
379
00:16:21,110 --> 00:16:23,300
collects which can now be turned into
380
00:16:23,300 --> 00:16:25,610
valuable information by algorithms that
381
00:16:25,610 --> 00:16:27,560
can squeeze meaningful results from
382
00:16:27,560 --> 00:16:30,830
jumbled masses of near randomness this
383
00:16:30,830 --> 00:16:33,350
value potential inherent in any data no
384
00:16:33,350 --> 00:16:36,020
matter how seemingly unimportant turns
385
00:16:36,020 --> 00:16:38,240
all data into potential knowledge and
386
00:16:38,240 --> 00:16:40,370
therefore imports to knowledge itself
387
00:16:40,370 --> 00:16:43,250
the commodity quality that's usually
388
00:16:43,250 --> 00:16:46,940
associated only with data but the more
389
00:16:46,940 --> 00:16:48,740
obvious sources for the knowledge as
390
00:16:48,740 --> 00:16:51,350
commodity concept are the commercial and
391
00:16:51,350 --> 00:16:54,200
educational worlds in the commercial
392
00:16:54,200 --> 00:16:55,730
world itself there is literal
393
00:16:55,730 --> 00:16:57,830
commodification the increasing attempt
394
00:16:57,830 --> 00:16:59,960
of capitalists to make knowledge into
395
00:16:59,960 --> 00:17:02,780
private property when they cannot own
396
00:17:02,780 --> 00:17:05,180
knowledge itself they charge monopoly
397
00:17:05,180 --> 00:17:07,579
rents for access to it even though the
398
00:17:07,579 --> 00:17:10,099
knowledge involved in the centrally
399
00:17:10,099 --> 00:17:12,109
important case of existing scholarship
400
00:17:12,109 --> 00:17:14,839
was built by the communal efforts of
401
00:17:14,839 --> 00:17:18,230
generations of scholars as a free common
402
00:17:18,230 --> 00:17:21,890
resource now that knowledge is by its
403
00:17:21,890 --> 00:17:24,260
nature common property has not bothered
404
00:17:24,260 --> 00:17:26,510
the capitalists in their attempt to turn
405
00:17:26,510 --> 00:17:28,790
it into an ownable thing they would
406
00:17:28,790 --> 00:17:30,440
copyright interpretations of the
407
00:17:30,440 --> 00:17:32,150
critique of Pure Reason if they could
408
00:17:32,150 --> 00:17:35,510
figure out a way to do so the
409
00:17:35,510 --> 00:17:37,160
educational world also drives
410
00:17:37,160 --> 00:17:39,950
commodification commodification in
411
00:17:39,950 --> 00:17:41,910
education has a long history
412
00:17:41,910 --> 00:17:43,830
cramming and teaching to the test were
413
00:17:43,830 --> 00:17:46,460
characteristic of 19th century Oxford
414
00:17:46,460 --> 00:17:49,200
more generally it's more easy more
415
00:17:49,200 --> 00:17:52,080
replicable and possibly more fair to
416
00:17:52,080 --> 00:17:54,420
test commodity content rather than to
417
00:17:54,420 --> 00:17:57,420
test reasoning powers and this fact has
418
00:17:57,420 --> 00:17:59,760
driven intensive commodification in
419
00:17:59,760 --> 00:18:03,720
tests the testing side of education the
420
00:18:03,720 --> 00:18:05,670
pressures inherent in testing have been
421
00:18:05,670 --> 00:18:07,380
paralleled by the extreme
422
00:18:07,380 --> 00:18:10,260
commodification in textbooks which for
423
00:18:10,260 --> 00:18:12,180
at least the last 40 years have in the
424
00:18:12,180 --> 00:18:14,160
United States been mainly designed by
425
00:18:14,160 --> 00:18:16,170
publishers marketing departments and
426
00:18:16,170 --> 00:18:18,990
have a purely commodity organization as
427
00:18:18,990 --> 00:18:21,930
a result even the finest students in an
428
00:18:21,930 --> 00:18:23,970
immense country like mine enter
429
00:18:23,970 --> 00:18:25,740
university with the notion that they
430
00:18:25,740 --> 00:18:28,080
will learn in the university not skills
431
00:18:28,080 --> 00:18:30,660
of knowing but rather a particular
432
00:18:30,660 --> 00:18:34,140
substantive content thus the drift
433
00:18:34,140 --> 00:18:36,300
toward ins knowledge as commodity has
434
00:18:36,300 --> 00:18:38,880
deep roots in the economic system the
435
00:18:38,880 --> 00:18:41,400
educational system and increasingly in
436
00:18:41,400 --> 00:18:44,220
the students themselves the most
437
00:18:44,220 --> 00:18:46,260
dangerous aspect of this drift is its
438
00:18:46,260 --> 00:18:49,710
self validating quality because of the
439
00:18:49,710 --> 00:18:51,900
steady rise of commodity knowledge noted
440
00:18:51,900 --> 00:18:54,420
earlier their authorized techniques that
441
00:18:54,420 --> 00:18:56,640
can automate some large portion of
442
00:18:56,640 --> 00:18:58,920
earlier knowledge production producing
443
00:18:58,920 --> 00:19:02,040
output that judged by earlier criterias
444
00:19:02,040 --> 00:19:04,740
perhaps only 80 or 90 percent as good as
445
00:19:04,740 --> 00:19:07,230
it was before but the automated
446
00:19:07,230 --> 00:19:09,240
technique then swamps the world with its
447
00:19:09,240 --> 00:19:11,460
second-rate products and people come to
448
00:19:11,460 --> 00:19:13,290
believe that whatever it is that the
449
00:19:13,290 --> 00:19:16,320
technique produces is knowledge think
450
00:19:16,320 --> 00:19:19,290
about wordles that is by sheer
451
00:19:19,290 --> 00:19:21,600
overproduction the new product becomes
452
00:19:21,600 --> 00:19:23,820
the paradigm of knowledge and contact is
453
00:19:23,820 --> 00:19:26,280
lost with other and pre-existing scales
454
00:19:26,280 --> 00:19:28,470
on the basis of which this new product
455
00:19:28,470 --> 00:19:31,800
is actually not excellent at all again
456
00:19:31,800 --> 00:19:33,990
can statistical programs are an
457
00:19:33,990 --> 00:19:36,720
excellent example widely available
458
00:19:36,720 --> 00:19:39,120
statistical packages enable people with
459
00:19:39,120 --> 00:19:40,440
little understanding of the mathematics
460
00:19:40,440 --> 00:19:42,840
the assumptions and the validity issues
461
00:19:42,840 --> 00:19:44,850
of statistical inference to write
462
00:19:44,850 --> 00:19:47,100
articles that appear successfully to use
463
00:19:47,100 --> 00:19:49,500
quite elaborate statistical analysis in
464
00:19:49,500 --> 00:19:52,370
fact the results are usually nonsense
465
00:19:52,370 --> 00:19:54,870
that's my experience from 15 years
466
00:19:54,870 --> 00:19:55,760
editing the America
467
00:19:55,760 --> 00:19:58,470
sociology but they look like knowledge
468
00:19:58,470 --> 00:20:01,049
and so inevitably they lead to the
469
00:20:01,049 --> 00:20:03,840
redefinition of what knowledge is most
470
00:20:03,840 --> 00:20:05,520
of digital humanities is another
471
00:20:05,520 --> 00:20:08,130
lugubrious lesson in such scholarly
472
00:20:08,130 --> 00:20:10,770
futility based as it is on data mining
473
00:20:10,770 --> 00:20:13,440
techniques with far less stability than
474
00:20:13,440 --> 00:20:16,970
the simplicity's of multiple regression
475
00:20:16,970 --> 00:20:19,950
let me turn now to changes in knowing as
476
00:20:19,950 --> 00:20:23,880
an activity my fourth area in telling
477
00:20:23,880 --> 00:20:25,830
the story of commodified statistics I
478
00:20:25,830 --> 00:20:27,840
have already drifted into my fourth area
479
00:20:27,840 --> 00:20:31,080
of interest that of knowing now the
480
00:20:31,080 --> 00:20:33,450
place where I myself confront changes in
481
00:20:33,450 --> 00:20:36,330
knowing most clearly is among first-year
482
00:20:36,330 --> 00:20:39,330
students in our College since every year
483
00:20:39,330 --> 00:20:42,210
I teach introductory social thought to a
484
00:20:42,210 --> 00:20:43,860
small class of eighteen and nineteen
485
00:20:43,860 --> 00:20:46,980
year olds that's what u.s. universities
486
00:20:46,980 --> 00:20:48,299
do they put the Distinguished Service
487
00:20:48,299 --> 00:20:50,690
professors teaching beginning students
488
00:20:50,690 --> 00:20:52,980
bear in mind that I teach it one of the
489
00:20:52,980 --> 00:20:54,630
best universities in the world and that
490
00:20:54,630 --> 00:20:56,070
our undergraduates are among the very
491
00:20:56,070 --> 00:20:59,039
best students in the United States now
492
00:20:59,039 --> 00:21:00,600
for the most part the students that I
493
00:21:00,600 --> 00:21:02,789
teach think that knowing something is
494
00:21:02,789 --> 00:21:07,260
knowing a web address a URL that is
495
00:21:07,260 --> 00:21:10,200
their chief model of knowing is finding
496
00:21:10,200 --> 00:21:12,299
since they've been doing that on the
497
00:21:12,299 --> 00:21:14,159
internet considerably longer than they
498
00:21:14,159 --> 00:21:17,460
have been at school they define reading
499
00:21:17,460 --> 00:21:21,120
itself as a kind of finding that is for
500
00:21:21,120 --> 00:21:23,429
them reading Adam Smith means looking
501
00:21:23,429 --> 00:21:25,320
for the five or six sentences in each
502
00:21:25,320 --> 00:21:28,559
chapter that really matter they don't
503
00:21:28,559 --> 00:21:29,909
understand that the rest of the
504
00:21:29,909 --> 00:21:32,490
sentences Adam Smith wrote contain the
505
00:21:32,490 --> 00:21:34,559
argument and the evidence by which he
506
00:21:34,559 --> 00:21:37,710
produces and defenses defends the senses
507
00:21:37,710 --> 00:21:40,350
that they have underlined for them
508
00:21:40,350 --> 00:21:42,179
reading is simply surfing something
509
00:21:42,179 --> 00:21:44,429
other than the internet it is an
510
00:21:44,429 --> 00:21:46,169
exercise in filtering out the
511
00:21:46,169 --> 00:21:48,120
irrelevance ease and finding out what
512
00:21:48,120 --> 00:21:50,220
really matters they simply do not
513
00:21:50,220 --> 00:21:52,110
believe that all that other stuff is
514
00:21:52,110 --> 00:21:55,049
necessary they do not in fact actually
515
00:21:55,049 --> 00:21:58,140
believe in thought they believe in bits
516
00:21:58,140 --> 00:22:01,200
of content now this model of knowing as
517
00:22:01,200 --> 00:22:03,210
finding is of course correlative with
518
00:22:03,210 --> 00:22:04,919
the notion that knowledge consists of
519
00:22:04,919 --> 00:22:07,320
commodities because commodities are
520
00:22:07,320 --> 00:22:08,909
things that can be found
521
00:22:08,909 --> 00:22:11,549
and typically since their model of
522
00:22:11,549 --> 00:22:13,830
finding dates from early childhood our
523
00:22:13,830 --> 00:22:16,169
students imagine that what there is to
524
00:22:16,169 --> 00:22:19,379
be found is fact content discrete bits
525
00:22:19,379 --> 00:22:21,929
of information whatever they seek
526
00:22:21,929 --> 00:22:24,299
whether it's the interpretation of Pride
527
00:22:24,299 --> 00:22:26,789
and Prejudice the ideas of Karl Marx or
528
00:22:26,789 --> 00:22:28,710
the essence of Gothic architecture
529
00:22:28,710 --> 00:22:30,539
they will think of it as a fact a
530
00:22:30,539 --> 00:22:33,509
commodity their idea of knowing does not
531
00:22:33,509 --> 00:22:36,899
include any notion of real argument if I
532
00:22:36,899 --> 00:22:38,639
ask these students for Adam Smith's
533
00:22:38,639 --> 00:22:41,009
argument they give me a list of bullet
534
00:22:41,009 --> 00:22:44,129
points all the items on that list will
535
00:22:44,129 --> 00:22:46,409
be things that Adam Smith said they will
536
00:22:46,409 --> 00:22:48,419
even be important things that Adam Smith
537
00:22:48,419 --> 00:22:50,909
said but there will be no logical
538
00:22:50,909 --> 00:22:53,340
connection between them because the
539
00:22:53,340 --> 00:22:54,960
students do not really think of an
540
00:22:54,960 --> 00:22:57,149
argument as a complex logical syntax
541
00:22:57,149 --> 00:23:01,649
they think of it as a list now the
542
00:23:01,649 --> 00:23:04,169
conceptions of knowing as finding and of
543
00:23:04,169 --> 00:23:06,840
argument as lists clearly arise in the
544
00:23:06,840 --> 00:23:08,279
fact that the first intellectual
545
00:23:08,279 --> 00:23:10,470
experiences of students are with the
546
00:23:10,470 --> 00:23:13,499
internet argument is impoverished there
547
00:23:13,499 --> 00:23:15,989
it's well known that internet pages are
548
00:23:15,989 --> 00:23:18,389
optimized at sixth grade language levels
549
00:23:18,389 --> 00:23:21,179
and the medium itself conduces to the
550
00:23:21,179 --> 00:23:22,859
idea that knowing is finding and that
551
00:23:22,859 --> 00:23:25,019
lists are the main architecture of
552
00:23:25,019 --> 00:23:27,419
knowing as long as the internet remains
553
00:23:27,419 --> 00:23:30,059
children's first intellectual food then
554
00:23:30,059 --> 00:23:32,359
we can expect to have to teach
555
00:23:32,359 --> 00:23:35,239
discursive reasoning quite explicitly
556
00:23:35,239 --> 00:23:38,129
unlike us they will not learn the skills
557
00:23:38,129 --> 00:23:40,139
of real thought passively from reading
558
00:23:40,139 --> 00:23:42,629
tens of thousands of pages of prose as
559
00:23:42,629 --> 00:23:44,849
youngsters they don't actually read that
560
00:23:44,849 --> 00:23:49,619
much now the ideas of knowing as finding
561
00:23:49,619 --> 00:23:51,690
and of argument as list are parts of a
562
00:23:51,690 --> 00:23:54,419
larger pattern our children think of
563
00:23:54,419 --> 00:23:58,590
knowing as strongly algorithmic this is
564
00:23:58,590 --> 00:24:00,090
this is not because they genuinely
565
00:24:00,090 --> 00:24:02,549
understand the nature of the metropolis
566
00:24:02,549 --> 00:24:03,720
or the householder or the
567
00:24:03,720 --> 00:24:07,379
needleman-wunsch algorithm it is because
568
00:24:07,379 --> 00:24:08,849
for example they grew up using
569
00:24:08,849 --> 00:24:10,559
calculators rather than memorizing
570
00:24:10,559 --> 00:24:13,349
multiplication tables that is they grew
571
00:24:13,349 --> 00:24:15,239
up with commodity aids for thinking
572
00:24:15,239 --> 00:24:17,129
rather than having to remember things
573
00:24:17,129 --> 00:24:19,950
and to think for themselves this
574
00:24:19,950 --> 00:24:21,960
algorithmic model of knowing means that
575
00:24:21,960 --> 00:24:22,260
they
576
00:24:22,260 --> 00:24:25,320
no sense of the other principal way of
577
00:24:25,320 --> 00:24:27,900
knowing which I shall call associative
578
00:24:27,900 --> 00:24:30,990
knowing since it involves associating
579
00:24:30,990 --> 00:24:33,750
things with each other now to have
580
00:24:33,750 --> 00:24:35,940
effective associative knowing your head
581
00:24:35,940 --> 00:24:38,580
must be full of knowledge to associate
582
00:24:38,580 --> 00:24:42,450
the new things you see with facts and
583
00:24:42,450 --> 00:24:44,250
notions and memories and arguments that
584
00:24:44,250 --> 00:24:46,050
function like so many the looks that
585
00:24:46,050 --> 00:24:48,510
grab into things in the text that pass
586
00:24:48,510 --> 00:24:51,270
in front of you but our students are
587
00:24:51,270 --> 00:24:53,460
unwilling to memorize actual knowledge
588
00:24:53,460 --> 00:24:55,050
since they devoutly believe that they
589
00:24:55,050 --> 00:24:57,500
can find anything when they need it
590
00:24:57,500 --> 00:24:59,940
forgetting that it takes time and search
591
00:24:59,940 --> 00:25:02,430
to do that this is not to say that they
592
00:25:02,430 --> 00:25:04,470
don't know anything quite the contrary
593
00:25:04,470 --> 00:25:06,540
they spend their leisure hours trolling
594
00:25:06,540 --> 00:25:08,490
the internet and have filled their minds
595
00:25:08,490 --> 00:25:10,950
with evanescent information most of it
596
00:25:10,950 --> 00:25:13,110
about consumption goods and about their
597
00:25:13,110 --> 00:25:15,360
friends recent behaviors clothing and
598
00:25:15,360 --> 00:25:19,260
random thoughts they refresh that is the
599
00:25:19,260 --> 00:25:21,900
erase those memories rapidly and are
600
00:25:21,900 --> 00:25:23,670
very proud of doing so it's what makes
601
00:25:23,670 --> 00:25:24,810
them okuu home
602
00:25:24,810 --> 00:25:27,360
they are thus not actually prepared to
603
00:25:27,360 --> 00:25:29,190
function as associative Minds
604
00:25:29,190 --> 00:25:31,920
an entire continent of knowing is simply
605
00:25:31,920 --> 00:25:35,580
invisible to them interestingly this
606
00:25:35,580 --> 00:25:37,740
preference for algorithmic as opposed to
607
00:25:37,740 --> 00:25:39,390
associative knowing among young people
608
00:25:39,390 --> 00:25:42,060
is echoed by a great change in knowing
609
00:25:42,060 --> 00:25:45,540
among adults in the commercial world in
610
00:25:45,540 --> 00:25:47,370
governments and even in a surprising
611
00:25:47,370 --> 00:25:49,500
amount of academia there is a strong
612
00:25:49,500 --> 00:25:51,660
notion today that there is basically one
613
00:25:51,660 --> 00:25:53,760
kind of knowing which is more or less
614
00:25:53,760 --> 00:25:56,790
that of modern science not indeed as it
615
00:25:56,790 --> 00:25:58,740
is actually practiced in laboratories
616
00:25:58,740 --> 00:26:00,930
but in the rigid caricature of
617
00:26:00,930 --> 00:26:03,090
scientific thinking represented by percy
618
00:26:03,090 --> 00:26:05,640
bridge means operational ism biological
619
00:26:05,640 --> 00:26:08,220
positivism and by the American version
620
00:26:08,220 --> 00:26:10,560
of scientific philosophy by Morris Cohen
621
00:26:10,560 --> 00:26:13,710
and Ernst Nagel this partially explains
622
00:26:13,710 --> 00:26:15,750
the drift of the humanists towards the
623
00:26:15,750 --> 00:26:18,090
silliness of digital humanities taking a
624
00:26:18,090 --> 00:26:19,710
scientific approach to forms of
625
00:26:19,710 --> 00:26:21,420
knowledge that are in principle
626
00:26:21,420 --> 00:26:24,840
unscientific another excellent
627
00:26:24,840 --> 00:26:26,700
illustration of this kind of scientist
628
00:26:26,700 --> 00:26:28,560
ation is the transformation of the
629
00:26:28,560 --> 00:26:30,900
discipline of economics from a general
630
00:26:30,900 --> 00:26:33,150
and quite profound reflection about the
631
00:26:33,150 --> 00:26:34,150
nature of human
632
00:26:34,150 --> 00:26:37,420
duction consumption and exchange into a
633
00:26:37,420 --> 00:26:38,890
narrow form of social engineering
634
00:26:38,890 --> 00:26:41,590
obsessed not only with discovering or
635
00:26:41,590 --> 00:26:43,960
rather enforcing the laws of a very
636
00:26:43,960 --> 00:26:46,600
particular kind of economy but also with
637
00:26:46,600 --> 00:26:48,640
teaching those laws as scientific truth
638
00:26:48,640 --> 00:26:50,470
to tens of millions of defenseless
639
00:26:50,470 --> 00:26:53,490
students annually a back-of-the-envelope
640
00:26:53,490 --> 00:26:55,840
calculation gives us the astounding fact
641
00:26:55,840 --> 00:26:59,230
that around 50 billion dollars are spent
642
00:26:59,230 --> 00:27:01,570
every year on the teaching of economics
643
00:27:01,570 --> 00:27:04,630
in the United States 50 billion and if
644
00:27:04,630 --> 00:27:05,890
you want to think about the real
645
00:27:05,890 --> 00:27:07,720
intellectual distinction of economics
646
00:27:07,720 --> 00:27:10,300
today just ask yourself whether Joseph
647
00:27:10,300 --> 00:27:12,430
Schumpeter could get a job in a current
648
00:27:12,430 --> 00:27:15,310
economics department every economist I
649
00:27:15,310 --> 00:27:17,170
have ever asked that question says that
650
00:27:17,170 --> 00:27:19,720
he could not and most of them are honest
651
00:27:19,720 --> 00:27:21,580
enough to admit that this is a sign of
652
00:27:21,580 --> 00:27:24,640
intellectual crisis now much of this
653
00:27:24,640 --> 00:27:26,620
one-size-fits-all approach to knowledge
654
00:27:26,620 --> 00:27:28,540
has been driven by the capture of the
655
00:27:28,540 --> 00:27:31,090
social sciences by the governmental task
656
00:27:31,090 --> 00:27:33,130
of evaluating the successes and failures
657
00:27:33,130 --> 00:27:36,070
of the welfare state a task which has
658
00:27:36,070 --> 00:27:38,050
pushed the social sciences themselves
659
00:27:38,050 --> 00:27:40,590
towards a narrow operational ISM
660
00:27:40,590 --> 00:27:43,090
important also has been the suicide of
661
00:27:43,090 --> 00:27:44,740
the humanities which at least in the
662
00:27:44,740 --> 00:27:47,500
United States have largely degenerated
663
00:27:47,500 --> 00:27:49,930
from broad inquiries into the nature of
664
00:27:49,930 --> 00:27:53,740
human culture into eager propositions of
665
00:27:53,740 --> 00:27:55,900
a well meant but often silly identity
666
00:27:55,900 --> 00:27:58,600
politics a politics which is itself of
667
00:27:58,600 --> 00:28:00,880
an intellectual structure and simplicity
668
00:28:00,880 --> 00:28:03,010
that was rejected by the social sciences
669
00:28:03,010 --> 00:28:06,550
many decades ago the ultimate symbol of
670
00:28:06,550 --> 00:28:08,410
this surrender to a one-size-fits-all
671
00:28:08,410 --> 00:28:10,360
form of knowing is the emergence of
672
00:28:10,360 --> 00:28:13,050
Google as a major site of scholarship
673
00:28:13,050 --> 00:28:15,730
now interestingly the Google project
674
00:28:15,730 --> 00:28:18,970
long antedates the internet by the 1920s
675
00:28:18,970 --> 00:28:21,970
the leaders of world librarianship had
676
00:28:21,970 --> 00:28:23,950
conceived the idea of a universal
677
00:28:23,950 --> 00:28:26,530
library with a master index the core
678
00:28:26,530 --> 00:28:27,870
idea of Google today
679
00:28:27,870 --> 00:28:31,060
now the scholars of 20th century America
680
00:28:31,060 --> 00:28:33,550
rejected that concept absolutely and
681
00:28:33,550 --> 00:28:36,250
pursued highly particular istic and
682
00:28:36,250 --> 00:28:38,650
associative indexing of a kind that we
683
00:28:38,650 --> 00:28:41,110
now know from Bayesian theory is both
684
00:28:41,110 --> 00:28:42,670
more useful and in fact more
685
00:28:42,670 --> 00:28:44,740
mathematically modern than other
686
00:28:44,740 --> 00:28:46,269
librarians and Google's
687
00:28:46,269 --> 00:28:49,479
indexes from nowhere the same thing
688
00:28:49,479 --> 00:28:51,549
happened with keyword indexes which
689
00:28:51,549 --> 00:28:54,459
emerged as a scholarly tool in the 1870s
690
00:28:54,459 --> 00:28:57,639
and it can be shown I did so in an
691
00:28:57,639 --> 00:28:59,619
article a couple of years ago that
692
00:28:59,619 --> 00:29:01,690
keyword indexes had absolutely no effect
693
00:29:01,690 --> 00:29:04,899
on scholarship whatsoever in recent
694
00:29:04,899 --> 00:29:06,940
years new technology has brought yet
695
00:29:06,940 --> 00:29:09,339
another return of this silly project of
696
00:29:09,339 --> 00:29:11,200
pouring all knowledge into a big garbage
697
00:29:11,200 --> 00:29:14,019
can and then providing feeble indexes
698
00:29:14,019 --> 00:29:16,869
with which to troll for results this is
699
00:29:16,869 --> 00:29:19,119
of course a massive step down from the
700
00:29:19,119 --> 00:29:21,009
powerful subject indexing of the mid
701
00:29:21,009 --> 00:29:23,349
20th century and the declining quality
702
00:29:23,349 --> 00:29:25,479
of our scholarly production shows the
703
00:29:25,479 --> 00:29:29,049
result that's my first two trends in
704
00:29:29,049 --> 00:29:32,379
knowing are a move towards a peculiar
705
00:29:32,379 --> 00:29:34,869
and limited form of algorithmic knowing
706
00:29:34,869 --> 00:29:36,940
among our young people and the
707
00:29:36,940 --> 00:29:38,169
increasing dominance of a
708
00:29:38,169 --> 00:29:40,809
one-size-fits-all concept of scientific
709
00:29:40,809 --> 00:29:44,200
knowing among their elders my search end
710
00:29:44,200 --> 00:29:46,119
has already made its appearance the
711
00:29:46,119 --> 00:29:48,009
phenomenal increase in knowing that is
712
00:29:48,009 --> 00:29:51,879
done not by us but by machines I must
713
00:29:51,879 --> 00:29:53,709
therefore say some home truths about
714
00:29:53,709 --> 00:29:54,929
computers
715
00:29:54,929 --> 00:29:57,759
let me first assure you however that I
716
00:29:57,759 --> 00:30:00,039
am neither a newcomer nor a naysayer
717
00:30:00,039 --> 00:30:01,329
about computers
718
00:30:01,329 --> 00:30:03,729
I built a simple hardwired computer
719
00:30:03,729 --> 00:30:06,190
under my father's direction in 1960 at
720
00:30:06,190 --> 00:30:10,509
age 12 I learned Fortran at 18 in 1967
721
00:30:10,509 --> 00:30:12,219
and I was applying strength search
722
00:30:12,219 --> 00:30:14,829
algorithms to social data 35 years ago
723
00:30:14,829 --> 00:30:18,459
long before Google existed so here are
724
00:30:18,459 --> 00:30:21,369
some home truths modern computing has
725
00:30:21,369 --> 00:30:24,579
truly immense power now to be sure the
726
00:30:24,579 --> 00:30:26,200
theoretical foundations of the great
727
00:30:26,200 --> 00:30:28,479
modern algorithms are quite old they
728
00:30:28,479 --> 00:30:31,779
date from the 1940s but we now have the
729
00:30:31,779 --> 00:30:33,519
machines to apply these methods on a
730
00:30:33,519 --> 00:30:36,729
breathtaking scale to applications seem
731
00:30:36,729 --> 00:30:39,700
to me particularly salient first the
732
00:30:39,700 --> 00:30:41,829
Monte Carlo revolution which enables us
733
00:30:41,829 --> 00:30:44,079
to simulate large systems in great
734
00:30:44,079 --> 00:30:47,169
detail and to estimate previously
735
00:30:47,169 --> 00:30:50,109
intractable Bayesian functional forms
736
00:30:50,109 --> 00:30:53,349
and second the search revolution that
737
00:30:53,349 --> 00:30:55,359
enables us to find very very faint
738
00:30:55,359 --> 00:30:58,179
signals in extremely noisy or sparse
739
00:30:58,179 --> 00:30:59,520
spaces
740
00:30:59,520 --> 00:31:01,290
I have myself published in both of these
741
00:31:01,290 --> 00:31:04,440
areas and I appreciate these revolutions
742
00:31:04,440 --> 00:31:06,600
very very much but computers are not
743
00:31:06,600 --> 00:31:09,330
very good at imagination their power at
744
00:31:09,330 --> 00:31:12,480
chest and now even at go rests mainly on
745
00:31:12,480 --> 00:31:14,490
brute force techniques rather than on
746
00:31:14,490 --> 00:31:17,610
imaginative ones they're also bad at the
747
00:31:17,610 --> 00:31:19,320
associative knowledge of the kind
748
00:31:19,320 --> 00:31:21,240
characteristic of much human thought and
749
00:31:21,240 --> 00:31:23,910
they make no use of emotion in thinking
750
00:31:23,910 --> 00:31:26,100
which oddly enough may turn out to be a
751
00:31:26,100 --> 00:31:29,610
fatal flaw but the successes of
752
00:31:29,610 --> 00:31:31,770
computers are producing a kind of highly
753
00:31:31,770 --> 00:31:34,200
regular commodified knowledge have
754
00:31:34,200 --> 00:31:36,360
tended to push our conception of knowing
755
00:31:36,360 --> 00:31:38,640
towards the kinds of knowing at which
756
00:31:38,640 --> 00:31:41,700
computers are best probability based
757
00:31:41,700 --> 00:31:44,910
simulation and search based on iterative
758
00:31:44,910 --> 00:31:47,460
rules laced with randomization at
759
00:31:47,460 --> 00:31:50,340
decisive places to repeat an example
760
00:31:50,340 --> 00:31:52,500
I've used a couple of times before many
761
00:31:52,500 --> 00:31:54,510
humanists expect great things from the
762
00:31:54,510 --> 00:31:56,910
digital humanities but it's now more
763
00:31:56,910 --> 00:31:59,580
than 40 years since scholars discovered
764
00:31:59,580 --> 00:32:02,220
by computational methods the order in
765
00:32:02,220 --> 00:32:04,200
which Plato's dialogues were written and
766
00:32:04,200 --> 00:32:06,600
it's more than 60 years since the works
767
00:32:06,600 --> 00:32:09,140
of Thomas Aquinas were keyword indexed
768
00:32:09,140 --> 00:32:11,550
yet neither of these discoveries has
769
00:32:11,550 --> 00:32:13,440
made the slightest impact on scholar
770
00:32:13,440 --> 00:32:15,660
scholarship and reflection about Plato
771
00:32:15,660 --> 00:32:18,420
and Saint Thomas because the kinds of
772
00:32:18,420 --> 00:32:20,670
things discoverable about them by using
773
00:32:20,670 --> 00:32:23,010
digital methods are of no real interest
774
00:32:23,010 --> 00:32:25,770
to the humanities properly conceived we
775
00:32:25,770 --> 00:32:27,540
don't care in what order Plato wrote the
776
00:32:27,540 --> 00:32:29,870
dialogues we care what they mean
777
00:32:29,870 --> 00:32:34,200
computers will not tell us that now the
778
00:32:34,200 --> 00:32:36,240
last and perhaps the most important of
779
00:32:36,240 --> 00:32:39,420
the changes in knowing is the decline of
780
00:32:39,420 --> 00:32:42,570
discursive linearly ordered knowing as a
781
00:32:42,570 --> 00:32:46,320
practice there are two changes causes of
782
00:32:46,320 --> 00:32:48,840
this change both have already made their
783
00:32:48,840 --> 00:32:51,210
appearance tonight the first is the move
784
00:32:51,210 --> 00:32:55,440
towards a group knowing a social knower
785
00:32:55,440 --> 00:32:58,370
because this takes shape in oral or
786
00:32:58,370 --> 00:33:01,200
conversational forms you know by having
787
00:33:01,200 --> 00:33:03,210
conversations our students spend
788
00:33:03,210 --> 00:33:04,530
enormous amounts of time and
789
00:33:04,530 --> 00:33:06,510
conversation even while they think they
790
00:33:06,510 --> 00:33:09,210
are studying even among serious scholars
791
00:33:09,210 --> 00:33:11,400
we find blogs that are in essence
792
00:33:11,400 --> 00:33:12,800
hallway conversation
793
00:33:12,800 --> 00:33:16,280
now I chat often in hallways myself but
794
00:33:16,280 --> 00:33:18,880
I don't mistake that for serious inquiry
795
00:33:18,880 --> 00:33:21,290
yet many of my younger colleagues to
796
00:33:21,290 --> 00:33:23,330
vote considerable time to broadcasting
797
00:33:23,330 --> 00:33:25,400
their hallway chatter and their
798
00:33:25,400 --> 00:33:27,230
scholarly work inevitably takes on a
799
00:33:27,230 --> 00:33:30,530
similar quality now perhaps this is not
800
00:33:30,530 --> 00:33:33,080
so bad or allottee is after all the
801
00:33:33,080 --> 00:33:35,750
basis of the internalized conversation
802
00:33:35,750 --> 00:33:39,340
that is thinking much more baleful is
803
00:33:39,340 --> 00:33:43,250
the shift towards visual knowing this is
804
00:33:43,250 --> 00:33:46,270
a very long-standing change
805
00:33:46,270 --> 00:33:48,230
illustrations became more and more
806
00:33:48,230 --> 00:33:50,150
important as the 19th century passed
807
00:33:50,150 --> 00:33:52,930
through print forms from the unlisted
808
00:33:52,930 --> 00:33:55,370
reviews of the beginning of the century
809
00:33:55,370 --> 00:33:57,770
to the middle class triple-decker novels
810
00:33:57,770 --> 00:34:00,050
with their multiple illustrations to the
811
00:34:00,050 --> 00:34:02,030
penny novels and the Illustrated news
812
00:34:02,030 --> 00:34:04,730
magazine and then the 20th century
813
00:34:04,730 --> 00:34:07,040
brought the movies and when has only to
814
00:34:07,040 --> 00:34:09,830
see even an excellent movie of a classic
815
00:34:09,830 --> 00:34:12,260
19th century novel to realize the
816
00:34:12,260 --> 00:34:14,380
decline in the power of the art form
817
00:34:14,380 --> 00:34:17,840
movies have their own many and wonderful
818
00:34:17,840 --> 00:34:20,300
virtues but those virtues are chiefly
819
00:34:20,300 --> 00:34:22,940
visual not theoretical and the subtle
820
00:34:22,940 --> 00:34:25,610
complexities of moral judgment personal
821
00:34:25,610 --> 00:34:27,980
conflict and social structure that
822
00:34:27,980 --> 00:34:30,830
undergird Anna Karenina disappear in the
823
00:34:30,830 --> 00:34:32,540
fascial experience of seeing it as a
824
00:34:32,540 --> 00:34:35,060
movie in a few hours rather than living
825
00:34:35,060 --> 00:34:37,429
with its microscopic details for the
826
00:34:37,429 --> 00:34:40,120
several weeks it takes to read the novel
827
00:34:40,120 --> 00:34:42,380
now movies were of course followed by
828
00:34:42,380 --> 00:34:44,630
television and by the internet there's
829
00:34:44,630 --> 00:34:46,370
no question these are brilliant and
830
00:34:46,370 --> 00:34:48,949
extraordinary communication forms and
831
00:34:48,949 --> 00:34:50,480
that they permit certain kinds of
832
00:34:50,480 --> 00:34:54,290
immediacy never before possible but
833
00:34:54,290 --> 00:34:56,090
despite the claims of Edward Tufte
834
00:34:56,090 --> 00:34:58,190
visual representation does not
835
00:34:58,190 --> 00:35:00,290
effectively convey highly complex
836
00:35:00,290 --> 00:35:02,930
thought and we would no more try to
837
00:35:02,930 --> 00:35:04,670
prove the fundamental theorem of the
838
00:35:04,670 --> 00:35:07,220
calculus with purely visual propositions
839
00:35:07,220 --> 00:35:09,320
than we would try to convey the moral
840
00:35:09,320 --> 00:35:11,630
ambiguities facing Hamlet without
841
00:35:11,630 --> 00:35:15,230
employing words visual knowing is simply
842
00:35:15,230 --> 00:35:17,150
not as powerful a tool of intellect as
843
00:35:17,150 --> 00:35:20,590
is discursive knowing that's just a fact
844
00:35:20,590 --> 00:35:23,000
let me then summarize what I think are
845
00:35:23,000 --> 00:35:24,860
the major changes happening in knowing
846
00:35:24,860 --> 00:35:26,030
this has been a long
847
00:35:26,030 --> 00:35:28,580
action what we see in our children and
848
00:35:28,580 --> 00:35:30,980
students are a strong shift towards
849
00:35:30,980 --> 00:35:33,470
social knowing knowing as finding
850
00:35:33,470 --> 00:35:36,350
knowing as algorithm and away from
851
00:35:36,350 --> 00:35:39,350
artisinal knowing knowing as Association
852
00:35:39,350 --> 00:35:42,770
and knowing as discursive argument more
853
00:35:42,770 --> 00:35:44,990
broadly the great shifts are first a
854
00:35:44,990 --> 00:35:47,420
shift towards computer-based knowing and
855
00:35:47,420 --> 00:35:50,090
it's typical strength search and
856
00:35:50,090 --> 00:35:52,130
simulation along with this emphasis on
857
00:35:52,130 --> 00:35:54,140
thinking via the routines of algorithms
858
00:35:54,140 --> 00:35:56,030
that rather than by the networks of
859
00:35:56,030 --> 00:35:58,820
Association second a shift towards a
860
00:35:58,820 --> 00:36:00,740
one-size-fits-all model of knowledge
861
00:36:00,740 --> 00:36:02,810
knowing based on the model of science
862
00:36:02,810 --> 00:36:05,570
decisively rejected by the philosophers
863
00:36:05,570 --> 00:36:07,540
more than half a century ago
864
00:36:07,540 --> 00:36:10,160
third moved towards a model of knowing
865
00:36:10,160 --> 00:36:12,500
as index and search but in a situation
866
00:36:12,500 --> 00:36:14,390
where we have much larger masses of
867
00:36:14,390 --> 00:36:16,910
materials and far weaker indexes than we
868
00:36:16,910 --> 00:36:20,000
had before fourth and finally a move
869
00:36:20,000 --> 00:36:22,280
away from complex discursive thought
870
00:36:22,280 --> 00:36:23,960
that can be shared only through
871
00:36:23,960 --> 00:36:26,180
carefully composed and edited prose or
872
00:36:26,180 --> 00:36:29,090
formal symbolism and towards the
873
00:36:29,090 --> 00:36:31,370
instantaneous facility of orality and
874
00:36:31,370 --> 00:36:35,510
visual representation it's a sign of my
875
00:36:35,510 --> 00:36:37,430
faith and discursive presentation that I
876
00:36:37,430 --> 00:36:39,980
have not shown you any pictures but have
877
00:36:39,980 --> 00:36:42,590
forced you to follow my argument to try
878
00:36:42,590 --> 00:36:46,040
to memorize its pieces to think to think
879
00:36:46,040 --> 00:36:48,500
my argument as you go along I'm very
880
00:36:48,500 --> 00:36:50,330
sure you'll remember my argument much
881
00:36:50,330 --> 00:36:51,950
better and will take it much more
882
00:36:51,950 --> 00:36:53,840
seriously because I have forced you to
883
00:36:53,840 --> 00:36:56,030
think it yourselves rather than to just
884
00:36:56,030 --> 00:36:57,920
see it as a list of propositions up
885
00:36:57,920 --> 00:37:00,680
there on the screen and I appreciate the
886
00:37:00,680 --> 00:37:02,270
hard work you've done in following my
887
00:37:02,270 --> 00:37:06,160
argument that's why I have some more
888
00:37:06,670 --> 00:37:09,590
third section is to talk about the
889
00:37:09,590 --> 00:37:11,960
temporality of the always changes I've
890
00:37:11,960 --> 00:37:14,900
mentioned so far the first step in
891
00:37:14,900 --> 00:37:16,520
putting these trends together is to
892
00:37:16,520 --> 00:37:18,560
recognize that they vary in their
893
00:37:18,560 --> 00:37:20,990
temporal qualities and their ability to
894
00:37:20,990 --> 00:37:24,770
be influenced or redirected by us some
895
00:37:24,770 --> 00:37:26,570
of these are trends some are one-time
896
00:37:26,570 --> 00:37:28,280
events some of these things are
897
00:37:28,280 --> 00:37:32,420
reversible some are not with respect to
898
00:37:32,420 --> 00:37:34,520
the known just go back to the beginning
899
00:37:34,520 --> 00:37:37,420
objects of knowledge I noted two changes
900
00:37:37,420 --> 00:37:39,740
move to social data and
901
00:37:39,740 --> 00:37:42,860
move to microscopic detail of these two
902
00:37:42,860 --> 00:37:45,880
the move to social data is a long-term
903
00:37:45,880 --> 00:37:48,770
irrevocable trend although there's
904
00:37:48,770 --> 00:37:50,630
currently an attempt to dismantle the
905
00:37:50,630 --> 00:37:52,280
state data gathering that was so
906
00:37:52,280 --> 00:37:54,500
characteristic of the 20th century it is
907
00:37:54,500 --> 00:37:56,840
more than offset by the astounding
908
00:37:56,840 --> 00:37:58,460
growth of commercial knowledge about the
909
00:37:58,460 --> 00:38:01,369
population now on the other hand the
910
00:38:01,369 --> 00:38:03,770
problem of microscopic detail is a
911
00:38:03,770 --> 00:38:06,130
matter of our own failure to invent
912
00:38:06,130 --> 00:38:08,590
intermediate conceptions that can
913
00:38:08,590 --> 00:38:11,150
conceptualize assemble and reflect about
914
00:38:11,150 --> 00:38:13,580
the hugely detailed knowledge that we
915
00:38:13,580 --> 00:38:15,830
now have this is a temporary condition
916
00:38:15,830 --> 00:38:18,680
and in reality it's a welcome change to
917
00:38:18,680 --> 00:38:21,500
the maturing social sciences with
918
00:38:21,500 --> 00:38:23,869
respect to the known then there is one
919
00:38:23,869 --> 00:38:26,300
irrevocable trend and one seeming trend
920
00:38:26,300 --> 00:38:28,790
that could be turned into a cycle by a
921
00:38:28,790 --> 00:38:32,330
serious intellectual response now visa
922
00:38:32,330 --> 00:38:34,610
these are knower the subject of knowing
923
00:38:34,610 --> 00:38:37,310
I detailed three changes the rise of
924
00:38:37,310 --> 00:38:39,290
social knowing the importance of
925
00:38:39,290 --> 00:38:41,360
organizations as knowers and the
926
00:38:41,360 --> 00:38:44,020
commodification of knowledge in things
927
00:38:44,020 --> 00:38:46,790
now the first of these the rise of
928
00:38:46,790 --> 00:38:48,680
social knowing has its origins in the
929
00:38:48,680 --> 00:38:51,859
emergence of enormous complex problems
930
00:38:51,859 --> 00:38:53,900
of knowing particularly problems of
931
00:38:53,900 --> 00:38:56,090
application more than those of basic
932
00:38:56,090 --> 00:38:58,880
science quantum mechanics came from
933
00:38:58,880 --> 00:39:01,280
invisible colleges and disciplines but
934
00:39:01,280 --> 00:39:02,990
the atom bomb was built by a large
935
00:39:02,990 --> 00:39:06,230
organization big science continued in
936
00:39:06,230 --> 00:39:08,240
peacetime because of similar practical
937
00:39:08,240 --> 00:39:10,820
complexities and organizational knowing
938
00:39:10,820 --> 00:39:12,980
more broadly arises from the search for
939
00:39:12,980 --> 00:39:14,930
efficiency in mass application as the
940
00:39:14,930 --> 00:39:18,650
modern hospital shows so well or so
941
00:39:18,650 --> 00:39:21,920
badly that's what the placing of
942
00:39:21,920 --> 00:39:23,750
knowledge into commodities this too
943
00:39:23,750 --> 00:39:25,940
began as a matter of efficiency and
944
00:39:25,940 --> 00:39:28,790
accuracy slide rules thermometers
945
00:39:28,790 --> 00:39:32,150
computers and so on however it is now
946
00:39:32,150 --> 00:39:34,220
driven by the profit motive because the
947
00:39:34,220 --> 00:39:35,990
capitalists have realized that while
948
00:39:35,990 --> 00:39:38,240
knowledge cannot be made into property
949
00:39:38,240 --> 00:39:40,910
in the minds of individuals it can be
950
00:39:40,910 --> 00:39:42,560
made property when embodied in a
951
00:39:42,560 --> 00:39:44,660
physical artifact or in certain kinds of
952
00:39:44,660 --> 00:39:47,720
texts all three of these changes then
953
00:39:47,720 --> 00:39:49,670
are driven by considerations largely
954
00:39:49,670 --> 00:39:51,109
external to the
955
00:39:51,109 --> 00:39:53,529
basic research in which we live
956
00:39:53,529 --> 00:39:55,880
technology application and capitalism
957
00:39:55,880 --> 00:39:59,900
other main forces here now of the three
958
00:39:59,900 --> 00:40:02,509
changes social knowing is in part a
959
00:40:02,509 --> 00:40:05,420
reversible trend as I noted earlier it
960
00:40:05,420 --> 00:40:08,059
has been reversed before in my own
961
00:40:08,059 --> 00:40:10,249
experience even today the best students
962
00:40:10,249 --> 00:40:12,380
prefer to work on their own as artisans
963
00:40:12,380 --> 00:40:15,019
and there's no real proof that basic
964
00:40:15,019 --> 00:40:16,969
research even in most of the Natural
965
00:40:16,969 --> 00:40:19,069
Sciences much less in the humanities and
966
00:40:19,069 --> 00:40:22,190
humanistic Social Sciences requires or
967
00:40:22,190 --> 00:40:24,109
is much helped by collective
968
00:40:24,109 --> 00:40:26,630
organization beyond invisible colleges
969
00:40:26,630 --> 00:40:29,029
and disciplines so I believe that
970
00:40:29,029 --> 00:40:31,519
artisanal knowing can be preserved as
971
00:40:31,519 --> 00:40:33,589
for the drift of knowledge into
972
00:40:33,589 --> 00:40:35,719
organizations and commodities that is
973
00:40:35,719 --> 00:40:37,640
basically the result of capitalism and
974
00:40:37,640 --> 00:40:39,410
of the public preference for useful
975
00:40:39,410 --> 00:40:41,299
knowledge rather than foundational
976
00:40:41,299 --> 00:40:43,309
knowledge these things cannot be
977
00:40:43,309 --> 00:40:45,650
affected by any response among academics
978
00:40:45,650 --> 00:40:47,930
and intellectuals other than showing our
979
00:40:47,930 --> 00:40:49,489
students the many ways that Google
980
00:40:49,489 --> 00:40:51,709
searches are much less effective than
981
00:40:51,709 --> 00:40:54,049
were the equivalent searches in the much
982
00:40:54,049 --> 00:40:57,829
higher quality print indexes in short of
983
00:40:57,829 --> 00:41:00,469
the three changes in the knower only
984
00:41:00,469 --> 00:41:02,959
social knowing can be slowed the
985
00:41:02,959 --> 00:41:04,849
increasing importance of organizational
986
00:41:04,849 --> 00:41:08,599
and commodity knowing is inevitable now
987
00:41:08,599 --> 00:41:10,279
to turn to the results of knowing
988
00:41:10,279 --> 00:41:11,299
knowledge itself
989
00:41:11,299 --> 00:41:13,670
I talked mainly about the embodying of
990
00:41:13,670 --> 00:41:15,619
knowledge and patentable commodities and
991
00:41:15,619 --> 00:41:17,719
the trend towards believing first that
992
00:41:17,719 --> 00:41:19,459
knowledge is made up of commodities and
993
00:41:19,459 --> 00:41:22,130
second that to have knowledge as a form
994
00:41:22,130 --> 00:41:23,959
of possession rather than a form of
995
00:41:23,959 --> 00:41:27,170
activity I think this trend towards a
996
00:41:27,170 --> 00:41:28,880
capitalist conception of knowledge is
997
00:41:28,880 --> 00:41:31,039
irrevocable for the moment at least
998
00:41:31,039 --> 00:41:33,440
within the universities because the
999
00:41:33,440 --> 00:41:34,789
universities have moved from the
1000
00:41:34,789 --> 00:41:36,349
periphery to the center of their
1001
00:41:36,349 --> 00:41:39,049
societies in the last century the
1002
00:41:39,049 --> 00:41:40,910
intellectual life that once found a home
1003
00:41:40,910 --> 00:41:43,160
in them is being pushed aside for two
1004
00:41:43,160 --> 00:41:46,190
other functions first certifying young
1005
00:41:46,190 --> 00:41:48,349
people for employment and second
1006
00:41:48,349 --> 00:41:50,569
inventing things or services that can
1007
00:41:50,569 --> 00:41:53,630
produce income or solve problems as a
1008
00:41:53,630 --> 00:41:56,089
result the institutions of disinterested
1009
00:41:56,089 --> 00:41:58,339
intellectual life could very well move
1010
00:41:58,339 --> 00:42:00,849
out of universities in the near future
1011
00:42:00,849 --> 00:42:03,740
real intellectual activity can either in
1012
00:42:03,740 --> 00:42:05,480
Jorn or survive the neoliberal
1013
00:42:05,480 --> 00:42:07,430
management that drives modern capitalism
1014
00:42:07,430 --> 00:42:09,800
I'm quite serious about this prediction
1015
00:42:09,800 --> 00:42:12,200
the love affair between intellectualism
1016
00:42:12,200 --> 00:42:14,960
and the universities about 100 plus
1017
00:42:14,960 --> 00:42:16,850
years old but it's going through a very
1018
00:42:16,850 --> 00:42:19,160
difficult time and divorce may come very
1019
00:42:19,160 --> 00:42:22,790
soon let me talk finally about the
1020
00:42:22,790 --> 00:42:26,390
changes in knowing the activity the move
1021
00:42:26,390 --> 00:42:27,980
towards algorithmic rather than
1022
00:42:27,980 --> 00:42:31,010
associative thinking and the idea that
1023
00:42:31,010 --> 00:42:31,820
all science
1024
00:42:31,820 --> 00:42:34,550
is scientific knowing these are in fact
1025
00:42:34,550 --> 00:42:36,830
recurrent episodes in the history of
1026
00:42:36,830 --> 00:42:39,650
knowledge in the 20th century in the US
1027
00:42:39,650 --> 00:42:41,810
for example scientism of this sort had
1028
00:42:41,810 --> 00:42:45,590
vogue vogue in the 19-teens in the late
1029
00:42:45,590 --> 00:42:48,560
1930s and the war years after Sputnik
1030
00:42:48,560 --> 00:42:52,220
and since the 1990s but such episodes of
1031
00:42:52,220 --> 00:42:54,290
scientism are always succeeded by
1032
00:42:54,290 --> 00:42:56,300
successful recasting of the social
1033
00:42:56,300 --> 00:42:58,190
sciences and humanities into non
1034
00:42:58,190 --> 00:43:01,190
scientific terms for example social
1035
00:43:01,190 --> 00:43:03,200
physics which we see today a network
1036
00:43:03,200 --> 00:43:05,570
analysis has come and gone at least
1037
00:43:05,570 --> 00:43:08,119
three times since it was first argued in
1038
00:43:08,119 --> 00:43:11,060
the 19th century or again most of the
1039
00:43:11,060 --> 00:43:13,310
big data techniques so fashionable today
1040
00:43:13,310 --> 00:43:16,490
are at least half a century old cluster
1041
00:43:16,490 --> 00:43:18,050
analysis factor analysis
1042
00:43:18,050 --> 00:43:20,270
multi-dimensional scaling Monte Carlo
1043
00:43:20,270 --> 00:43:22,750
simulation simulated annealing and so on
1044
00:43:22,750 --> 00:43:25,160
when they were first invented it was
1045
00:43:25,160 --> 00:43:26,540
quickly discovered that they don't
1046
00:43:26,540 --> 00:43:28,400
provide answers that scholars actually
1047
00:43:28,400 --> 00:43:30,770
believe and so many of them were left to
1048
00:43:30,770 --> 00:43:32,420
the market researchers who have lower
1049
00:43:32,420 --> 00:43:34,580
standards although a few of them did
1050
00:43:34,580 --> 00:43:36,410
eventually find useful homes and
1051
00:43:36,410 --> 00:43:39,830
scientific analysis now by contrast the
1052
00:43:39,830 --> 00:43:41,630
move towards imagining knowing as a
1053
00:43:41,630 --> 00:43:44,540
matter of index search and assembles the
1054
00:43:44,540 --> 00:43:47,540
Google program is as I noted a centrally
1055
00:43:47,540 --> 00:43:50,180
old program long rejected by scholars
1056
00:43:50,180 --> 00:43:52,820
but it has however taken the scholars by
1057
00:43:52,820 --> 00:43:55,640
storm in the last 20 years in part
1058
00:43:55,640 --> 00:43:57,500
because the scholars themselves have
1059
00:43:57,500 --> 00:43:59,540
been so awfully inadequate and coming up
1060
00:43:59,540 --> 00:44:01,670
with answers to the challenge other
1061
00:44:01,670 --> 00:44:04,730
challenges that I have talked about I do
1062
00:44:04,730 --> 00:44:06,650
think this trend can be halted if our
1063
00:44:06,650 --> 00:44:08,270
colleagues wake up to the challenge
1064
00:44:08,270 --> 00:44:10,280
which they may do once they get past
1065
00:44:10,280 --> 00:44:12,470
their initial blind enthusiasm for
1066
00:44:12,470 --> 00:44:15,619
things digital much more important
1067
00:44:15,619 --> 00:44:16,859
however the move from
1068
00:44:16,859 --> 00:44:18,869
cursive two visual symbols has been
1069
00:44:18,869 --> 00:44:21,329
underway for well over a century and it
1070
00:44:21,329 --> 00:44:22,829
looks likely to continue for the
1071
00:44:22,829 --> 00:44:25,890
foreseeable future this last is a
1072
00:44:25,890 --> 00:44:27,749
central problem for expert knowing
1073
00:44:27,749 --> 00:44:29,999
because knowing has been founded on
1074
00:44:29,999 --> 00:44:32,130
complex discursive argument for at least
1075
00:44:32,130 --> 00:44:35,460
five centuries in the West dating back
1076
00:44:35,460 --> 00:44:38,039
to the coming of print and yet our
1077
00:44:38,039 --> 00:44:39,720
student students are woefully unprepared
1078
00:44:39,720 --> 00:44:42,420
to deal with complex argument because
1079
00:44:42,420 --> 00:44:44,190
they simply don't have the immense print
1080
00:44:44,190 --> 00:44:46,440
experience that's been characteristic of
1081
00:44:46,440 --> 00:44:48,569
societies since the rise of general
1082
00:44:48,569 --> 00:44:51,660
literacy in the 19th century this is an
1083
00:44:51,660 --> 00:44:53,549
example of one of those long term trends
1084
00:44:53,549 --> 00:44:55,619
that we cannot possibly influence we
1085
00:44:55,619 --> 00:44:57,450
must simply take account of it and we
1086
00:44:57,450 --> 00:44:58,920
must adjust our teaching to the
1087
00:44:58,920 --> 00:45:02,489
challenges that it presents to summarise
1088
00:45:02,489 --> 00:45:04,769
in terms of time horizon then certain
1089
00:45:04,769 --> 00:45:08,039
trends seem long steady and irrevocable
1090
00:45:08,039 --> 00:45:11,069
these are so moved towards increasing
1091
00:45:11,069 --> 00:45:15,089
knowledge of the social the move towards
1092
00:45:15,089 --> 00:45:17,249
organization and commodities as knowers
1093
00:45:17,249 --> 00:45:18,989
because of the immense efficiencies
1094
00:45:18,989 --> 00:45:21,390
involved the move particularly among
1095
00:45:21,390 --> 00:45:23,190
young people towards a conception of
1096
00:45:23,190 --> 00:45:25,650
knowledge as discrete commodities in
1097
00:45:25,650 --> 00:45:27,329
part because of the capitalist interest
1098
00:45:27,329 --> 00:45:29,640
in commodification but more because it's
1099
00:45:29,640 --> 00:45:32,640
inculcated by the internet and fourth
1100
00:45:32,640 --> 00:45:34,589
the move from discursive knowing to
1101
00:45:34,589 --> 00:45:36,660
visual and oral knowing because visual
1102
00:45:36,660 --> 00:45:38,369
and aural knowing are easier more
1103
00:45:38,369 --> 00:45:40,680
popular perhaps more democratic because
1104
00:45:40,680 --> 00:45:42,930
they demand less and because the change
1105
00:45:42,930 --> 00:45:45,509
has been underway for at least 150 plus
1106
00:45:45,509 --> 00:45:48,210
years that this shift is a decline in
1107
00:45:48,210 --> 00:45:50,160
terms of abstract reasoning and thought
1108
00:45:50,160 --> 00:45:52,289
seems to be invisible to all too many
1109
00:45:52,289 --> 00:45:54,569
intellectuals who are caught up with the
1110
00:45:54,569 --> 00:45:56,999
mania for visualization which if you've
1111
00:45:56,999 --> 00:45:58,829
actually worked with it is a very
1112
00:45:58,829 --> 00:46:02,160
two-edged sword indeed but the
1113
00:46:02,160 --> 00:46:03,809
combination of inevitability and
1114
00:46:03,809 --> 00:46:05,579
importance means that we must address
1115
00:46:05,579 --> 00:46:08,940
this change head-on it requires serious
1116
00:46:08,940 --> 00:46:11,099
remedial work with BA and doctoral
1117
00:46:11,099 --> 00:46:14,369
students whom we take to be candidates
1118
00:46:14,369 --> 00:46:17,099
to be our successors so those are the
1119
00:46:17,099 --> 00:46:18,989
irrevocable changes what if what are the
1120
00:46:18,989 --> 00:46:20,519
things that are trends that we might
1121
00:46:20,519 --> 00:46:23,970
actually affect first we might change
1122
00:46:23,970 --> 00:46:26,249
the drive of social knowledge towards
1123
00:46:26,249 --> 00:46:28,170
microscopic detail and
1124
00:46:28,170 --> 00:46:30,839
consequent inability to theorize those
1125
00:46:30,839 --> 00:46:32,670
things can be addressed by serious
1126
00:46:32,670 --> 00:46:34,619
theoretical work and the invention of
1127
00:46:34,619 --> 00:46:36,950
new kinds of intermediate conceptions
1128
00:46:36,950 --> 00:46:39,809
second we can address much of the drift
1129
00:46:39,809 --> 00:46:41,849
to social and collective knowing which
1130
00:46:41,849 --> 00:46:44,940
is mainly driven by desertion of basic
1131
00:46:44,940 --> 00:46:47,520
research for applied research we can do
1132
00:46:47,520 --> 00:46:50,490
that by turning back to basic research
1133
00:46:50,490 --> 00:46:52,920
and in ignoring both the blandishments
1134
00:46:52,920 --> 00:46:56,030
and the punishments of external interest
1135
00:46:56,030 --> 00:46:58,260
third I think we can address the
1136
00:46:58,260 --> 00:47:00,390
tendency of science to impose itself as
1137
00:47:00,390 --> 00:47:02,430
a one-size-fits-all model for knowing
1138
00:47:02,430 --> 00:47:05,190
this argument is always self-limiting
1139
00:47:05,190 --> 00:47:07,049
because with few exceptions even the
1140
00:47:07,049 --> 00:47:09,720
most hardened scientist can see that
1141
00:47:09,720 --> 00:47:11,970
human life inevitably involves morality
1142
00:47:11,970 --> 00:47:14,670
legality beauty and other non
1143
00:47:14,670 --> 00:47:17,299
scientifically conceivable qualities
1144
00:47:17,299 --> 00:47:20,609
amusingly among those who can understand
1145
00:47:20,609 --> 00:47:22,349
this fact of the law and economics
1146
00:47:22,349 --> 00:47:24,510
ideologues of my own universities law
1147
00:47:24,510 --> 00:47:28,530
school forth I think we can address the
1148
00:47:28,530 --> 00:47:30,690
current tendency to treat all-knowing as
1149
00:47:30,690 --> 00:47:33,119
possible through index and search to
1150
00:47:33,119 --> 00:47:35,400
treat all knowing as algorithmic I think
1151
00:47:35,400 --> 00:47:37,890
that too is self-limiting associate of
1152
00:47:37,890 --> 00:47:40,230
knowing is extremely powerful and as yet
1153
00:47:40,230 --> 00:47:42,690
computers have no skill for it by
1154
00:47:42,690 --> 00:47:44,730
formally conceptualizing the different
1155
00:47:44,730 --> 00:47:46,559
but equally important excellences of
1156
00:47:46,559 --> 00:47:48,839
associative reasoning we can effectively
1157
00:47:48,839 --> 00:47:51,240
push this particular pendulum back the
1158
00:47:51,240 --> 00:47:53,819
other way thus there are inevitably
1159
00:47:53,819 --> 00:47:56,940
release and there are cycles but beyond
1160
00:47:56,940 --> 00:47:58,619
the inevitability and the cycles are
1161
00:47:58,619 --> 00:48:00,329
aspects of the current crisis that are
1162
00:48:00,329 --> 00:48:02,730
simply one-time problems the most
1163
00:48:02,730 --> 00:48:04,559
obvious of these is the failure of the
1164
00:48:04,559 --> 00:48:06,450
human and social sciences to develop
1165
00:48:06,450 --> 00:48:08,970
serious new tools to make sense out of
1166
00:48:08,970 --> 00:48:11,640
the excess of things to know which is
1167
00:48:11,640 --> 00:48:13,049
surely just a temporary problem
1168
00:48:13,049 --> 00:48:14,700
occasioned by the onslaught of
1169
00:48:14,700 --> 00:48:17,599
information from the new data machines
1170
00:48:17,599 --> 00:48:19,650
thus we see that the mix of
1171
00:48:19,650 --> 00:48:21,720
inevitabilities of cyclical phenomena
1172
00:48:21,720 --> 00:48:24,299
and of one-time events requires that we
1173
00:48:24,299 --> 00:48:27,000
devote our energy to the cycles not to
1174
00:48:27,000 --> 00:48:28,799
the inevitabilities which we can affect
1175
00:48:28,799 --> 00:48:30,750
and that we must make sure that real
1176
00:48:30,750 --> 00:48:33,540
experts are the judges of what works as
1177
00:48:33,540 --> 00:48:37,290
knowledge and what does not work well I
1178
00:48:37,290 --> 00:48:39,839
wish to close by arguing that there is
1179
00:48:39,839 --> 00:48:41,220
beyond behind
1180
00:48:41,220 --> 00:48:43,859
our current situation a deeper one-time
1181
00:48:43,859 --> 00:48:46,550
problem this is my closing section I
1182
00:48:46,550 --> 00:48:48,960
believe that the real reason all these
1183
00:48:48,960 --> 00:48:51,089
other trends and cycles cause problems
1184
00:48:51,089 --> 00:48:53,400
in contemporary Expert knowing is that
1185
00:48:53,400 --> 00:48:55,109
they threaten us at a moment when our
1186
00:48:55,109 --> 00:48:57,690
own internal history has reached a
1187
00:48:57,690 --> 00:49:00,900
turning point the last twenty years have
1188
00:49:00,900 --> 00:49:03,329
seen the culmination of the previous
1189
00:49:03,329 --> 00:49:05,910
strategy undergirding our expert
1190
00:49:05,910 --> 00:49:07,619
knowledge institutions in the modern
1191
00:49:07,619 --> 00:49:09,960
world the culmination of what I shall
1192
00:49:09,960 --> 00:49:13,430
call the 20th century knowledge project
1193
00:49:13,430 --> 00:49:15,990
that is I think that a great knowledge
1194
00:49:15,990 --> 00:49:18,150
project was conceived in the last years
1195
00:49:18,150 --> 00:49:20,280
of the 19th century and then was
1196
00:49:20,280 --> 00:49:22,650
co-developed with with the universities
1197
00:49:22,650 --> 00:49:25,589
throughout the 20th I think that project
1198
00:49:25,589 --> 00:49:28,560
was a massive success a success we see
1199
00:49:28,560 --> 00:49:30,480
in the tens of thousands of brilliant
1200
00:49:30,480 --> 00:49:32,310
books produced by the world scholars
1201
00:49:32,310 --> 00:49:34,920
under this regime of knowledge and by
1202
00:49:34,920 --> 00:49:37,109
the astonishing burst of basic science
1203
00:49:37,109 --> 00:49:39,300
that opened the gates of so many areas
1204
00:49:39,300 --> 00:49:41,609
requiring enough elaboration and
1205
00:49:41,609 --> 00:49:43,260
sustaining enough applications to
1206
00:49:43,260 --> 00:49:45,690
preoccupy us all for many decades to
1207
00:49:45,690 --> 00:49:49,650
come now this 20th century project was
1208
00:49:49,650 --> 00:49:52,109
not the project of Leopold von anka or
1209
00:49:52,109 --> 00:49:55,650
Louis Pasteur or James Bryce 19th
1210
00:49:55,650 --> 00:49:56,970
century knowledge was something
1211
00:49:56,970 --> 00:49:59,220
different and indeed the great 19th
1212
00:49:59,220 --> 00:50:01,109
century scholars might well have thought
1213
00:50:01,109 --> 00:50:03,630
that our 20th century project was a step
1214
00:50:03,630 --> 00:50:05,490
down from the high standards and
1215
00:50:05,490 --> 00:50:08,450
perfected rigor that they so much value
1216
00:50:08,450 --> 00:50:10,829
but whatever they might have thought I
1217
00:50:10,829 --> 00:50:12,780
think that the 20th century project has
1218
00:50:12,780 --> 00:50:16,079
been a wild success the trouble is that
1219
00:50:16,079 --> 00:50:19,260
it's over we have done what we can do
1220
00:50:19,260 --> 00:50:21,540
under the regime of knowing that we have
1221
00:50:21,540 --> 00:50:24,960
had and the drift of smart young people
1222
00:50:24,960 --> 00:50:27,089
off to the world of application to
1223
00:50:27,089 --> 00:50:29,700
Google research to the business world is
1224
00:50:29,700 --> 00:50:31,710
a sign that we are no longer interesting
1225
00:50:31,710 --> 00:50:34,290
enough to command the best minds of the
1226
00:50:34,290 --> 00:50:36,540
new generations thus the very
1227
00:50:36,540 --> 00:50:38,670
culmination of our own project leaves us
1228
00:50:38,670 --> 00:50:41,130
wondering what to do next at a moment
1229
00:50:41,130 --> 00:50:43,440
when as it happens the external world
1230
00:50:43,440 --> 00:50:45,750
has threatened many aspects of the
1231
00:50:45,750 --> 00:50:47,280
social structure and cultural practices
1232
00:50:47,280 --> 00:50:50,310
that have sustained our work so well for
1233
00:50:50,310 --> 00:50:53,310
so many years now I shall tell this
1234
00:50:53,310 --> 00:50:54,840
story mainly as it applies to
1235
00:50:54,840 --> 00:50:56,910
humanities and social sciences although
1236
00:50:56,910 --> 00:50:58,830
I think it can work with a few changes
1237
00:50:58,830 --> 00:51:02,250
for the Natural Sciences as well I also
1238
00:51:02,250 --> 00:51:04,110
tell it basically as an American story
1239
00:51:04,110 --> 00:51:05,910
for I think it is unquestionable that
1240
00:51:05,910 --> 00:51:07,860
the American universities dominated the
1241
00:51:07,860 --> 00:51:09,720
academic world for the entire 20th
1242
00:51:09,720 --> 00:51:13,290
century let me remind you of the origins
1243
00:51:13,290 --> 00:51:16,230
of modern American academia after the
1244
00:51:16,230 --> 00:51:18,210
American Civil War many Americans made
1245
00:51:18,210 --> 00:51:19,950
the trek to the German and French
1246
00:51:19,950 --> 00:51:23,010
universities for Advanced Education much
1247
00:51:23,010 --> 00:51:25,020
as the Chinese are trekking to America
1248
00:51:25,020 --> 00:51:27,960
today on their return they realized that
1249
00:51:27,960 --> 00:51:29,730
the American University whether it was a
1250
00:51:29,730 --> 00:51:32,400
small private school producing clergyman
1251
00:51:32,400 --> 00:51:34,830
or a brand-new State University designed
1252
00:51:34,830 --> 00:51:36,330
to advance learning for the general
1253
00:51:36,330 --> 00:51:38,580
population they realized that those
1254
00:51:38,580 --> 00:51:40,740
would need a complete transformation to
1255
00:51:40,740 --> 00:51:43,860
become serious institutions they created
1256
00:51:43,860 --> 00:51:45,570
that new institution by grafting a
1257
00:51:45,570 --> 00:51:48,320
German top on to an English bottom
1258
00:51:48,320 --> 00:51:50,730
marrying specialist education for
1259
00:51:50,730 --> 00:51:52,650
graduate students to generalist
1260
00:51:52,650 --> 00:51:55,260
education for undergraduates in the
1261
00:51:55,260 --> 00:51:57,240
process they democratized the German
1262
00:51:57,240 --> 00:51:59,550
Research Institute into the departmental
1263
00:51:59,550 --> 00:52:02,130
band of equals and they loosened the
1264
00:52:02,130 --> 00:52:04,200
then-new English specialized honors
1265
00:52:04,200 --> 00:52:06,600
curriculum into a combination of general
1266
00:52:06,600 --> 00:52:09,990
education and a departmental major this
1267
00:52:09,990 --> 00:52:11,730
undergraduate curriculum was loosely
1268
00:52:11,730 --> 00:52:13,890
organized around an English style canon
1269
00:52:13,890 --> 00:52:17,160
of material but the German top of the
1270
00:52:17,160 --> 00:52:19,860
American University required PhD work by
1271
00:52:19,860 --> 00:52:22,350
would-be faculty and this meant that the
1272
00:52:22,350 --> 00:52:24,300
new young scholars turned on the one
1273
00:52:24,300 --> 00:52:25,950
hand to the investigation of the
1274
00:52:25,950 --> 00:52:28,320
humanistic Canon and on the other to the
1275
00:52:28,320 --> 00:52:29,820
creation of an equivalent and more
1276
00:52:29,820 --> 00:52:32,580
empirical social science Canon also
1277
00:52:32,580 --> 00:52:34,860
largely organized around canonical or
1278
00:52:34,860 --> 00:52:37,470
canonic canonize abou areas like
1279
00:52:37,470 --> 00:52:40,020
political and social theory national and
1280
00:52:40,020 --> 00:52:41,700
period history and cross-cultural
1281
00:52:41,700 --> 00:52:45,690
comparison now the American universities
1282
00:52:45,690 --> 00:52:47,790
expanded more or less exponentially from
1283
00:52:47,790 --> 00:52:51,690
1890 to 1975 with short breathers during
1284
00:52:51,690 --> 00:52:53,400
the first world war and the depression
1285
00:52:53,400 --> 00:52:54,590
in the Second World War
1286
00:52:54,590 --> 00:52:57,210
like all exponentially expanding
1287
00:52:57,210 --> 00:52:59,640
populations faculty were young on
1288
00:52:59,640 --> 00:53:01,320
average the system was accordingly
1289
00:53:01,320 --> 00:53:05,700
creative hopeful upbeat after 1975
1290
00:53:05,700 --> 00:53:08,250
however demographic crisis set in
1291
00:53:08,250 --> 00:53:10,830
expansion of the system stopped the
1292
00:53:10,830 --> 00:53:13,590
faculty rapidly aged and the new system
1293
00:53:13,590 --> 00:53:15,690
had as many senior scholars as it had
1294
00:53:15,690 --> 00:53:18,690
assistant professors as I showed in a
1295
00:53:18,690 --> 00:53:20,550
recent article this demographic change
1296
00:53:20,550 --> 00:53:23,099
touched off the academia wide decrease
1297
00:53:23,099 --> 00:53:26,849
in reading an increase in writing that
1298
00:53:26,849 --> 00:53:28,200
are commonly and to a large extent
1299
00:53:28,200 --> 00:53:30,869
erroneously attributed to neoliberal
1300
00:53:30,869 --> 00:53:34,260
management but more important the end of
1301
00:53:34,260 --> 00:53:36,150
expansion turned the academic market
1302
00:53:36,150 --> 00:53:38,160
from a seller's market to a buyers
1303
00:53:38,160 --> 00:53:40,590
market leading to the explosive
1304
00:53:40,590 --> 00:53:42,840
expansion of unimportant publication
1305
00:53:42,840 --> 00:53:45,420
that we observe today which in turn has
1306
00:53:45,420 --> 00:53:47,340
made it harder to read systematically
1307
00:53:47,340 --> 00:53:49,200
and so has furthered the decline of
1308
00:53:49,200 --> 00:53:51,869
knowing that is many of the things that
1309
00:53:51,869 --> 00:53:53,700
are considered to be part of the grand
1310
00:53:53,700 --> 00:53:56,490
crisis in American academia today are in
1311
00:53:56,490 --> 00:53:58,859
fact simple consequences of the social
1312
00:53:58,859 --> 00:54:00,630
structure that was produced by the
1313
00:54:00,630 --> 00:54:03,030
inevitable end of American academic
1314
00:54:03,030 --> 00:54:06,060
expansion even more important to the
1315
00:54:06,060 --> 00:54:07,980
crisis was the fact that the exponential
1316
00:54:07,980 --> 00:54:10,290
expansion had burned up dissertation
1317
00:54:10,290 --> 00:54:12,900
topics faster than a wildfire burns up
1318
00:54:12,900 --> 00:54:16,050
forests there were 40 dissertations on
1319
00:54:16,050 --> 00:54:18,839
Jane Austen by 1963 and several hundred
1320
00:54:18,839 --> 00:54:21,810
on Shakespeare indeed the rise of
1321
00:54:21,810 --> 00:54:23,430
identity politics as legitimate
1322
00:54:23,430 --> 00:54:25,920
dissertation topics may well have been
1323
00:54:25,920 --> 00:54:28,560
just an attempt to find new dissertation
1324
00:54:28,560 --> 00:54:31,050
topics by rejecting all prior
1325
00:54:31,050 --> 00:54:33,480
scholarship as biased one could begin
1326
00:54:33,480 --> 00:54:35,609
again one could reinvent the whole thing
1327
00:54:35,609 --> 00:54:38,280
from scratch this time taking seriously
1328
00:54:38,280 --> 00:54:40,320
women or blacks or Latinos or
1329
00:54:40,320 --> 00:54:41,910
homosexuals or whoever was you're
1330
00:54:41,910 --> 00:54:44,250
interested in this bought the American
1331
00:54:44,250 --> 00:54:46,109
humanities and Social Sciences perhaps
1332
00:54:46,109 --> 00:54:48,720
in other 30 years of dissertation
1333
00:54:48,720 --> 00:54:51,060
research but the problem with this
1334
00:54:51,060 --> 00:54:53,730
identity politics strategy were several
1335
00:54:53,730 --> 00:54:57,119
for one thing it made the non cumulative
1336
00:54:57,119 --> 00:54:58,770
nature of the humanities and Social
1337
00:54:58,770 --> 00:55:01,500
Sciences all too evident at a time when
1338
00:55:01,500 --> 00:55:04,950
science was waxing strong for another it
1339
00:55:04,950 --> 00:55:07,130
allowed intense politicization and
1340
00:55:07,130 --> 00:55:10,020
established ad hominem and anachronistic
1341
00:55:10,020 --> 00:55:12,240
arguments as legitimate and thereby
1342
00:55:12,240 --> 00:55:15,030
undercut core legitimacy of intellectual
1343
00:55:15,030 --> 00:55:18,720
life third it distracted scholars from
1344
00:55:18,720 --> 00:55:21,090
the merely postponed problem of in vain
1345
00:55:21,090 --> 00:55:23,790
some new form of knowing now that the
1346
00:55:23,790 --> 00:55:25,650
20th century project was reaching
1347
00:55:25,650 --> 00:55:30,530
combination more broadly this strategy
1348
00:55:30,530 --> 00:55:33,060
concealed from American academics the
1349
00:55:33,060 --> 00:55:35,610
nature and price of their 20th century
1350
00:55:35,610 --> 00:55:37,800
success they had created an
1351
00:55:37,800 --> 00:55:39,750
extraordinary organization to be sure
1352
00:55:39,750 --> 00:55:42,030
but much of its greatness lay in its
1353
00:55:42,030 --> 00:55:44,520
perpetual growth and when that growth
1354
00:55:44,520 --> 00:55:46,620
inevitably stopped the whole system
1355
00:55:46,620 --> 00:55:49,830
stopped with it American academia was in
1356
00:55:49,830 --> 00:55:52,190
effect a Ponzi scheme
1357
00:55:52,190 --> 00:55:54,570
moreover the university became so
1358
00:55:54,570 --> 00:55:56,160
successful as an institution that
1359
00:55:56,160 --> 00:55:58,800
society began to rely on it as a machine
1360
00:55:58,800 --> 00:56:01,320
to evaluate the nation's young which of
1361
00:56:01,320 --> 00:56:03,840
necessity imposed standards inimical to
1362
00:56:03,840 --> 00:56:06,480
academic life obvious example being the
1363
00:56:06,480 --> 00:56:09,090
great grade inflation that pervades
1364
00:56:09,090 --> 00:56:13,620
elite academic education in America but
1365
00:56:13,620 --> 00:56:15,510
if the price of success with the was
1366
00:56:15,510 --> 00:56:17,760
that the society expected the university
1367
00:56:17,760 --> 00:56:20,700
to do all things for all people the more
1368
00:56:20,700 --> 00:56:24,470
profound problem was internal by 2000
1369
00:56:24,470 --> 00:56:26,670
academia had reached the end of the
1370
00:56:26,670 --> 00:56:28,920
knowledge project founded on canonical
1371
00:56:28,920 --> 00:56:31,740
thinking mastery of basics and research
1372
00:56:31,740 --> 00:56:33,930
that was related to canonical topics and
1373
00:56:33,930 --> 00:56:37,350
tied to disciplinary organization it had
1374
00:56:37,350 --> 00:56:39,600
done what it had set out to do and its
1375
00:56:39,600 --> 00:56:41,460
record the collective product of
1376
00:56:41,460 --> 00:56:43,110
American universities in the 20th
1377
00:56:43,110 --> 00:56:45,630
century is indeed an astonishing and
1378
00:56:45,630 --> 00:56:49,020
masterful whole but it was also in the
1379
00:56:49,020 --> 00:56:51,900
past tense no one can read more than a
1380
00:56:51,900 --> 00:56:53,640
tiny fraction of it and the synthetic
1381
00:56:53,640 --> 00:56:55,530
tools and problematics that could
1382
00:56:55,530 --> 00:56:57,990
organize academia around such a common
1383
00:56:57,990 --> 00:57:00,960
knowledge project are gone today the
1384
00:57:00,960 --> 00:57:03,600
mixture of canons and digest that had
1385
00:57:03,600 --> 00:57:05,190
sustained the loose coherence of
1386
00:57:05,190 --> 00:57:08,360
disciplines eventually simply fell apart
1387
00:57:08,360 --> 00:57:10,950
economics circled the wagons around its
1388
00:57:10,950 --> 00:57:13,650
cannon but thereby generated into a form
1389
00:57:13,650 --> 00:57:16,440
of engineering anthropology rejected its
1390
00:57:16,440 --> 00:57:18,150
founding fathers and found out that it
1391
00:57:18,150 --> 00:57:19,530
really wasn't about anything
1392
00:57:19,530 --> 00:57:22,110
history degenerated into squabbles over
1393
00:57:22,110 --> 00:57:24,780
who was more oppressed than whom I could
1394
00:57:24,780 --> 00:57:27,360
go on the fact of the matter is that by
1395
00:57:27,360 --> 00:57:29,520
2000 the 20th century knowledge project
1396
00:57:29,520 --> 00:57:32,160
was all played out and a strategy that
1397
00:57:32,160 --> 00:57:34,260
had extended its life for a couple of
1398
00:57:34,260 --> 00:57:37,080
kids after 1980 actually killed it in
1399
00:57:37,080 --> 00:57:39,930
the end to put the matter simply we are
1400
00:57:39,930 --> 00:57:41,940
at a moment where we must invent a new
1401
00:57:41,940 --> 00:57:45,360
way of being academic intellectuals it's
1402
00:57:45,360 --> 00:57:47,640
not clear what that will be only that
1403
00:57:47,640 --> 00:57:50,760
the old way is at an end our scholarly
1404
00:57:50,760 --> 00:57:52,500
communications consists mainly of
1405
00:57:52,500 --> 00:57:56,220
unimportant make work our managers are
1406
00:57:56,220 --> 00:57:58,350
rewarding flash rather than substance
1407
00:57:58,350 --> 00:58:00,630
our research tools have descended to the
1408
00:58:00,630 --> 00:58:03,060
level of worthless keyword searches our
1409
00:58:03,060 --> 00:58:04,740
peer-review system is weakened to the
1410
00:58:04,740 --> 00:58:06,930
point of being cursory many of our
1411
00:58:06,930 --> 00:58:08,580
disciplinary associations have
1412
00:58:08,580 --> 00:58:10,530
degenerated in soft core political
1413
00:58:10,530 --> 00:58:13,290
associations the disciplines themselves
1414
00:58:13,290 --> 00:58:14,790
are under systematic attack by
1415
00:58:14,790 --> 00:58:16,380
administrators and by colleagues who
1416
00:58:16,380 --> 00:58:17,850
wish to forsake the disciplines for
1417
00:58:17,850 --> 00:58:19,820
interdiscipline and centers
1418
00:58:19,820 --> 00:58:22,050
self-publishing has become a major and
1419
00:58:22,050 --> 00:58:24,930
even an approved practice undergraduate
1420
00:58:24,930 --> 00:58:26,850
students are seducing us in the name of
1421
00:58:26,850 --> 00:58:28,590
relevance and openness into teaching
1422
00:58:28,590 --> 00:58:32,400
that is both lazy and ineffective now
1423
00:58:32,400 --> 00:58:33,840
most of these things are not so much the
1424
00:58:33,840 --> 00:58:35,610
signs of decline as they are signs of
1425
00:58:35,610 --> 00:58:38,070
success we have accomplished what our
1426
00:58:38,070 --> 00:58:40,230
predecessors set out to do a century or
1427
00:58:40,230 --> 00:58:42,810
more ago we have covered the Western
1428
00:58:42,810 --> 00:58:45,360
Canon with careful scholarly inquiry we
1429
00:58:45,360 --> 00:58:46,890
have done thousands of studies of
1430
00:58:46,890 --> 00:58:48,990
everyday social life and comparative
1431
00:58:48,990 --> 00:58:51,240
politics and symbolic practices and so
1432
00:58:51,240 --> 00:58:53,820
on what we have not done is to rethink
1433
00:58:53,820 --> 00:58:56,790
all this digest it and use it to
1434
00:58:56,790 --> 00:58:59,220
formulate a new kind of knowing that can
1435
00:58:59,220 --> 00:59:01,440
go forward and command the minds of our
1436
00:59:01,440 --> 00:59:04,350
very best young people that they
1437
00:59:04,350 --> 00:59:06,150
themselves probably cannot undertake
1438
00:59:06,150 --> 00:59:08,160
that task under the precarious
1439
00:59:08,160 --> 00:59:09,420
conditions of current academic
1440
00:59:09,420 --> 00:59:12,990
employment is no doubt true only a very
1441
00:59:12,990 --> 00:59:15,630
bold mind will buck the trend to fashion
1442
00:59:15,630 --> 00:59:18,450
ability and flash given that that is the
1443
00:59:18,450 --> 00:59:20,580
case it's up to us who are already in
1444
00:59:20,580 --> 00:59:22,680
the system to figure out the new way to
1445
00:59:22,680 --> 00:59:25,310
shape the knowing of the future and
1446
00:59:25,310 --> 00:59:27,720
there is certainly excitement at hand
1447
00:59:27,720 --> 00:59:29,790
given the fact that academia will in the
1448
00:59:29,790 --> 00:59:32,130
next 40 years need to come to terms with
1449
00:59:32,130 --> 00:59:34,650
the vast new university systems of India
1450
00:59:34,650 --> 00:59:37,380
and China and more broadly with the
1451
00:59:37,380 --> 00:59:38,910
growth of the world of knowledge as it
1452
00:59:38,910 --> 00:59:40,800
spreads to societies that are far from
1453
00:59:40,800 --> 00:59:43,290
Western thought in their outlook on life
1454
00:59:43,290 --> 00:59:46,590
and the very knowledge trends that I
1455
00:59:46,590 --> 00:59:47,670
have listed present
1456
00:59:47,670 --> 00:59:50,070
in themselves an enormous intellectual
1457
00:59:50,070 --> 00:59:52,740
challenge much of my own work trying to
1458
00:59:52,740 --> 00:59:54,240
theorize the nature of humanistic
1459
00:59:54,240 --> 00:59:56,340
knowledge has come from fighting battles
1460
00:59:56,340 --> 00:59:58,980
over our University's library over new
1461
00:59:58,980 --> 01:00:01,440
kinds of research and so on and indeed
1462
01:00:01,440 --> 01:00:03,420
perhaps the academic knower of the
1463
01:00:03,420 --> 01:00:05,490
future will need to be a non specialist
1464
01:00:05,490 --> 01:00:08,430
as I am someone who can if I can
1465
01:00:08,430 --> 01:00:10,200
paraphrase mark do mathematical
1466
01:00:10,200 --> 01:00:11,520
sociology in the morning
1467
01:00:11,520 --> 01:00:14,310
ethnography at midday archival analysis
1468
01:00:14,310 --> 01:00:16,710
in the afternoon and critique in the
1469
01:00:16,710 --> 01:00:19,110
evening that kind of multi skill could
1470
01:00:19,110 --> 01:00:20,730
be the basis of a whole new kind of
1471
01:00:20,730 --> 01:00:22,920
intellectual order of course it could
1472
01:00:22,920 --> 01:00:25,010
also be just self-indulgent nonsense but
1473
01:00:25,010 --> 01:00:27,660
there it is the main fact is that the
1474
01:00:27,660 --> 01:00:29,640
project we have been doing is probably
1475
01:00:29,640 --> 01:00:32,220
over and it's over at a time when we are
1476
01:00:32,220 --> 01:00:34,950
under severe threat from outside it is
1477
01:00:34,950 --> 01:00:36,930
therefore a time for profound reflection
1478
01:00:36,930 --> 01:00:40,920
and for decisive action above all it's a
1479
01:00:40,920 --> 01:00:44,100
time for imagination otherwise the kind
1480
01:00:44,100 --> 01:00:45,780
of knowing to which many of us have
1481
01:00:45,780 --> 01:00:47,340
given our lives will simply disappear
1482
01:00:47,340 --> 01:00:51,380
over the next 30 or 40 years
1483
01:00:53,330 --> 01:00:58,929
[Applause]
1484
01:00:59,200 --> 01:01:03,950
okay well perhaps I can start professor
1485
01:01:03,950 --> 01:01:07,070
Everett could you perhaps summarize how
1486
01:01:07,070 --> 01:01:11,870
the trends that you outlined well in the
1487
01:01:11,870 --> 01:01:17,050
next few years changed Social Sciences
1488
01:01:25,660 --> 01:01:30,200
there we are thank you you know I guess
1489
01:01:30,200 --> 01:01:31,640
if I knew the answer to that question I
1490
01:01:31,640 --> 01:01:34,760
would have written it already and but I
1491
01:01:34,760 --> 01:01:39,560
don't so I'm working on it right now so
1492
01:01:39,560 --> 01:01:42,440
my really major book at present is an
1493
01:01:42,440 --> 01:01:46,820
attempt to refund all of the Social
1494
01:01:46,820 --> 01:01:50,060
Sciences on the concept of process which
1495
01:01:50,060 --> 01:01:52,640
in a certain way is to attack the basic
1496
01:01:52,640 --> 01:01:54,530
nineteenth-century concept at the heart
1497
01:01:54,530 --> 01:01:56,210
of the Social Sciences which is
1498
01:01:56,210 --> 01:02:01,250
historicism so I figured if I could chin
1499
01:02:01,250 --> 01:02:02,510
up a whole way of thinking about the
1500
01:02:02,510 --> 01:02:04,820
world that's anti historicist that would
1501
01:02:04,820 --> 01:02:07,750
give people stuff to work on for a while
1502
01:02:07,750 --> 01:02:09,800
other people may be doing other things
1503
01:02:09,800 --> 01:02:12,140
that are equally complex that's the
1504
01:02:12,140 --> 01:02:16,400
level on which those of us who are able
1505
01:02:16,400 --> 01:02:19,970
need to think I genuinely believe this
1506
01:02:19,970 --> 01:02:22,250
argument that kind of there was a thing
1507
01:02:22,250 --> 01:02:23,990
that we did and then twentieth century
1508
01:02:23,990 --> 01:02:27,950
and that it's kind of done that's at the
1509
01:02:27,950 --> 01:02:29,720
heart of the knowledge book that I'm
1510
01:02:29,720 --> 01:02:33,680
writing and I just I think that we're in
1511
01:02:33,680 --> 01:02:35,690
a new world this world is very different
1512
01:02:35,690 --> 01:02:37,340
the kinds of knowing that exist and are
1513
01:02:37,340 --> 01:02:38,060
very different
1514
01:02:38,060 --> 01:02:40,460
the problematics have to be different so
1515
01:02:40,460 --> 01:02:42,860
it's not a time for minor wrinkles it's
1516
01:02:42,860 --> 01:02:45,770
a time for bold thinking and really
1517
01:02:45,770 --> 01:02:48,950
radical change because otherwise we're
1518
01:02:48,950 --> 01:02:50,300
just going to sit here going through the
1519
01:02:50,300 --> 01:02:52,250
motions and producing meaningless little
1520
01:02:52,250 --> 01:02:55,070
articles you know in the period of the
1521
01:02:55,070 --> 01:02:57,200
mid night mid twentieth century what
1522
01:02:57,200 --> 01:03:01,460
before the buyers market emerged the
1523
01:03:01,460 --> 01:03:03,530
average American academic wrote two or
1524
01:03:03,530 --> 01:03:07,520
three papers in a lifetime now what that
1525
01:03:07,520 --> 01:03:09,800
meant was they had a lot of time to read
1526
01:03:09,800 --> 01:03:12,110
and there wasn't anywhere near as much
1527
01:03:12,110 --> 01:03:12,800
to read
1528
01:03:12,800 --> 01:03:15,950
and now we write two or three papers
1529
01:03:15,950 --> 01:03:19,250
quite a month but for most of us say to
1530
01:03:19,250 --> 01:03:22,580
be a small amount for a year there's
1531
01:03:22,580 --> 01:03:24,380
just too much to read the whole system
1532
01:03:24,380 --> 01:03:27,610
is premise Thanh on a different kind of
1533
01:03:27,610 --> 01:03:29,930
availability of time it really was a
1534
01:03:29,930 --> 01:03:32,060
Ponzi scheme and it can't the structure
1535
01:03:32,060 --> 01:03:33,740
of academics that we have set up cannot
1536
01:03:33,740 --> 01:03:36,170
continue functioning outside the Ponzi
1537
01:03:36,170 --> 01:03:38,300
context so who knows who knows what will
1538
01:03:38,300 --> 01:03:39,590
happen the whole thing could move
1539
01:03:39,590 --> 01:03:42,140
outside the universities and build from
1540
01:03:42,140 --> 01:03:43,880
little tiny organizations up again
1541
01:03:43,880 --> 01:03:46,760
that's another Ponzi scheme right you
1542
01:03:46,760 --> 01:03:48,320
get rid of the old Ponzi scheme and you
1543
01:03:48,320 --> 01:03:52,660
start a new one which will be better I
1544
01:03:52,960 --> 01:03:57,310
have no idea was answering your question
1545
01:03:57,310 --> 01:03:59,810
we have another question I think in a
1546
01:03:59,810 --> 01:04:03,770
second row Michigan thanks a lot for
1547
01:04:03,770 --> 01:04:07,400
this incredibly rich presentation and
1548
01:04:07,400 --> 01:04:10,340
although you say that not having visual
1549
01:04:10,340 --> 01:04:13,240
aids is an aid to us I'm not so
1550
01:04:13,240 --> 01:04:15,860
convinced because unless I read the
1551
01:04:15,860 --> 01:04:20,450
stuff my memory is taxed so just one
1552
01:04:20,450 --> 01:04:21,980
point where I would like some
1553
01:04:21,980 --> 01:04:26,810
clarification visual knowledge you were
1554
01:04:26,810 --> 01:04:31,970
rather negative on it and the example
1555
01:04:31,970 --> 01:04:35,120
you gave was on a Karenina and Hamlet
1556
01:04:35,120 --> 01:04:38,930
which as we know are texts written in
1557
01:04:38,930 --> 01:04:39,620
words
1558
01:04:39,620 --> 01:04:43,760
now what about forms of knowledge that
1559
01:04:43,760 --> 01:04:47,570
are created on the visual plain meaning
1560
01:04:47,570 --> 01:04:51,620
movies like Rashomon or high noon or
1561
01:04:51,620 --> 01:04:56,870
maybe star wars where anything literary
1562
01:04:56,870 --> 01:05:00,470
would be secondary to it so as you also
1563
01:05:00,470 --> 01:05:03,680
speak for emotion as a form of knowing
1564
01:05:03,680 --> 01:05:07,970
wouldn't that release another dimension
1565
01:05:07,970 --> 01:05:12,460
of knowing rather than being just a
1566
01:05:12,460 --> 01:05:16,220
small copy of it there's there's no
1567
01:05:16,220 --> 01:05:20,360
question that the purely visual worlds
1568
01:05:20,360 --> 01:05:22,940
for purely visual arts
1569
01:05:22,940 --> 01:05:24,829
have their own absolutely wonderful
1570
01:05:24,829 --> 01:05:29,210
internal logic so you know we look in
1571
01:05:29,210 --> 01:05:30,170
the history we look at the history of
1572
01:05:30,170 --> 01:05:32,150
dating you see how basically generation
1573
01:05:32,150 --> 01:05:34,789
so painters are commenting on previous
1574
01:05:34,789 --> 01:05:38,480
Vader's views of the world it's clear
1575
01:05:38,480 --> 01:05:42,980
that one can do that the danger that I'm
1576
01:05:42,980 --> 01:05:44,930
seeing of course you argue only against
1577
01:05:44,930 --> 01:05:47,539
the danger is not not against other
1578
01:05:47,539 --> 01:05:50,119
stuff you take for granted the danger
1579
01:05:50,119 --> 01:05:51,890
that I see among the students is that my
1580
01:05:51,890 --> 01:05:54,109
students the young ones really want a
1581
01:05:54,109 --> 01:05:55,460
picture of anything before they can
1582
01:05:55,460 --> 01:05:57,760
understand they think even an argument
1583
01:05:57,760 --> 01:06:02,690
and they don't seem to have been taught
1584
01:06:02,690 --> 01:06:05,599
geometry the way one was taught geometry
1585
01:06:05,599 --> 01:06:06,950
when the purpose of learning it was not
1586
01:06:06,950 --> 01:06:09,520
the pictures but the method of proof
1587
01:06:09,520 --> 01:06:11,930
they don't have the students who are
1588
01:06:11,930 --> 01:06:13,760
coming into my classes don't have that
1589
01:06:13,760 --> 01:06:17,119
grasp of proof structure and so on so I
1590
01:06:17,119 --> 01:06:21,289
think that my briefing it's
1591
01:06:21,289 --> 01:06:23,720
visualization it's a bit of a rant but I
1592
01:06:23,720 --> 01:06:25,970
certainly don't want to in any way
1593
01:06:25,970 --> 01:06:31,910
suggest that knowing or thought that in
1594
01:06:31,910 --> 01:06:33,529
some sense it's fundamentally visual
1595
01:06:33,529 --> 01:06:35,240
should somehow be represented in words
1596
01:06:35,240 --> 01:06:36,920
that's crazy it doesn't work very well
1597
01:06:36,920 --> 01:06:39,049
there are situations in which the
1598
01:06:39,049 --> 01:06:40,579
picture is worth a thousand words but
1599
01:06:40,579 --> 01:06:43,220
the moral arguments of Anna Karenina are
1600
01:06:43,220 --> 01:06:46,309
not an example of that now maybe Annika
1601
01:06:46,309 --> 01:06:48,680
Renard is beauty is but on the other
1602
01:06:48,680 --> 01:06:50,660
hand since canons a beauty change from
1603
01:06:50,660 --> 01:06:52,400
time to time then you're encoding a
1604
01:06:52,400 --> 01:06:55,220
particular whatever but you know in the
1605
01:06:55,220 --> 01:06:56,690
future it could easily be the case that
1606
01:06:56,690 --> 01:06:58,160
we could design a movie of Anna Karenina
1607
01:06:58,160 --> 01:07:01,099
that would be directly clued into
1608
01:07:01,099 --> 01:07:03,770
current fashion styles and so the
1609
01:07:03,770 --> 01:07:06,079
costumes will be continually redone you
1610
01:07:06,079 --> 01:07:08,029
could watch the movie again or you could
1611
01:07:08,029 --> 01:07:11,720
watch a 19th 1920s version in 1930s
1612
01:07:11,720 --> 01:07:13,640
version and just all that somebody will
1613
01:07:13,640 --> 01:07:16,039
figure out how to do that it's fun so I
1614
01:07:16,039 --> 01:07:18,829
don't mean to say that visual thinking
1615
01:07:18,829 --> 01:07:22,460
is not important or useful I mean oh I'm
1616
01:07:22,460 --> 01:07:24,799
a go player and nobody would think about
1617
01:07:24,799 --> 01:07:26,770
playing go without having that knowledge
1618
01:07:26,770 --> 01:07:29,839
the danger is the loss of the of the
1619
01:07:29,839 --> 01:07:32,270
power of discourse a discursive argument
1620
01:07:32,270 --> 01:07:34,370
which I really see in students just
1621
01:07:34,370 --> 01:07:36,830
their papers in their work and in the
1622
01:07:36,830 --> 01:07:38,420
notion that they can read Adam Smith and
1623
01:07:38,420 --> 01:07:41,000
not see that the argument has a logical
1624
01:07:41,000 --> 01:07:43,370
structure and these are very smart kids
1625
01:07:43,370 --> 01:07:44,930
from the best high schools in America
1626
01:07:44,930 --> 01:07:48,860
they said we don't have that thank you
1627
01:07:48,860 --> 01:07:53,240
we have two more questions one one far
1628
01:07:53,240 --> 01:07:55,400
back and the other here on the right
1629
01:07:55,400 --> 01:08:02,420
side Thank You professor Abbott for a
1630
01:08:02,420 --> 01:08:05,990
very provocative lecture so I guess I
1631
01:08:05,990 --> 01:08:08,720
would consider myself of being a member
1632
01:08:08,720 --> 01:08:15,520
of the group of emerging contagion of
1633
01:08:15,520 --> 01:08:23,390
visual index social knowing and I and in
1634
01:08:23,390 --> 01:08:26,000
your lecture you can'tyou direct this
1635
01:08:26,000 --> 01:08:30,380
critique to one might say the old guard
1636
01:08:30,380 --> 01:08:31,700
of people who have already made in
1637
01:08:31,700 --> 01:08:34,100
academia and and you leave it to them to
1638
01:08:34,100 --> 01:08:36,710
kind of reinvent a new way of knowing to
1639
01:08:36,710 --> 01:08:38,630
make the university relevant again and
1640
01:08:38,630 --> 01:08:42,200
I'm wondering then where my role might
1641
01:08:42,200 --> 01:08:45,410
be in that I think you know your role
1642
01:08:45,410 --> 01:08:47,680
will be fine in the first place you know
1643
01:08:47,680 --> 01:08:51,020
we're gonna be dead pretty soon so the
1644
01:08:51,020 --> 01:08:53,600
great thing the really great thing about
1645
01:08:53,600 --> 01:08:56,330
academia is you don't have to defeat the
1646
01:08:56,330 --> 01:08:59,569
arguments of older people is it schmuck
1647
01:08:59,569 --> 01:09:02,330
Splunk writer says science advances one
1648
01:09:02,330 --> 01:09:05,660
funeral at a time so you don't have to
1649
01:09:05,660 --> 01:09:07,810
worry you'll take over automatically
1650
01:09:07,810 --> 01:09:10,569
because we'll be gone
1651
01:09:10,569 --> 01:09:13,700
obviously there are students who still
1652
01:09:13,700 --> 01:09:16,069
have wonderful discursive skills I do
1653
01:09:16,069 --> 01:09:17,920
have students who do nothing but read
1654
01:09:17,920 --> 01:09:20,029
there are plenty of people who have this
1655
01:09:20,029 --> 01:09:22,430
often people who have profound training
1656
01:09:22,430 --> 01:09:24,020
in mathematics are people who can move
1657
01:09:24,020 --> 01:09:26,930
it quickly into other sorts of areas can
1658
01:09:26,930 --> 01:09:28,819
do extremely difficult argument because
1659
01:09:28,819 --> 01:09:31,910
of that unfortunately for example in
1660
01:09:31,910 --> 01:09:33,859
sociology we're losing all those people
1661
01:09:33,859 --> 01:09:36,620
who according to economics so we need
1662
01:09:36,620 --> 01:09:38,210
the mathematicians although it's a
1663
01:09:38,210 --> 01:09:39,410
certain kind of mathematician a
1664
01:09:39,410 --> 01:09:40,939
mathematician with an imagination that
1665
01:09:40,939 --> 01:09:42,800
you need so of course there are tons of
1666
01:09:42,800 --> 01:09:45,469
people in the younger generation
1667
01:09:45,469 --> 01:09:49,488
have I'm now sat on 102 dissertation
1668
01:09:49,488 --> 01:09:51,469
committees and they're smart young
1669
01:09:51,469 --> 01:09:53,930
people who have wonderful skills and
1670
01:09:53,930 --> 01:09:55,580
ability there's plenty of people to come
1671
01:09:55,580 --> 01:10:01,010
after us to do it I do think that you
1672
01:10:01,010 --> 01:10:03,469
know the job of turning out the lights
1673
01:10:03,469 --> 01:10:06,949
and pointing the way to the new house
1674
01:10:06,949 --> 01:10:10,760
that's kind of is up to us that's what
1675
01:10:10,760 --> 01:10:11,989
I'm trying to do in this thing by
1676
01:10:11,989 --> 01:10:13,790
talking about a 20th century project
1677
01:10:13,790 --> 01:10:16,370
that has to be much much elaborated
1678
01:10:16,370 --> 01:10:21,050
chapter in the book clearly but of
1679
01:10:21,050 --> 01:10:31,100
course young people the future German
1680
01:10:31,100 --> 01:10:33,620
funding agency and I was wondering if
1681
01:10:33,620 --> 01:10:37,430
our scientist suddenly see how rotten
1682
01:10:37,430 --> 01:10:39,410
this entire mass production of
1683
01:10:39,410 --> 01:10:41,540
publications is and they will stop
1684
01:10:41,540 --> 01:10:44,989
writing papers how are we supposed to to
1685
01:10:44,989 --> 01:10:48,560
know whose worth to be funded like
1686
01:10:48,560 --> 01:10:51,110
whoever we give our funding to if we
1687
01:10:51,110 --> 01:10:53,840
have to wait 50 years until you will
1688
01:10:53,840 --> 01:10:57,020
publish your first publication and then
1689
01:10:57,020 --> 01:10:59,680
we'll see only then we see if you're
1690
01:10:59,680 --> 01:11:00,949
brilliant
1691
01:11:00,949 --> 01:11:04,940
or just pretending well you know let's
1692
01:11:04,940 --> 01:11:07,940
put it this way so there are several
1693
01:11:07,940 --> 01:11:09,410
things to say in response to that first
1694
01:11:09,410 --> 01:11:10,520
of all people could cut their
1695
01:11:10,520 --> 01:11:14,420
publication rate by 80% and you would
1696
01:11:14,420 --> 01:11:16,280
still have plenty enough stuff to judge
1697
01:11:16,280 --> 01:11:19,250
on so for example if you look at Britain
1698
01:11:19,250 --> 01:11:21,770
the move they've taken from the re e to
1699
01:11:21,770 --> 01:11:23,510
the RAF the research excellence
1700
01:11:23,510 --> 01:11:25,670
framework they are now insisting on
1701
01:11:25,670 --> 01:11:28,130
seeing only four pieces from each
1702
01:11:28,130 --> 01:11:29,870
individual instead of everything they've
1703
01:11:29,870 --> 01:11:32,660
ever dreamed or thought or you know
1704
01:11:32,660 --> 01:11:37,100
written down so there's a long ways to
1705
01:11:37,100 --> 01:11:39,560
go before you're gonna be in trouble for
1706
01:11:39,560 --> 01:11:44,630
stuff to judge I think a second problem
1707
01:11:44,630 --> 01:11:47,239
a second and much more subtle problem
1708
01:11:47,239 --> 01:11:50,239
with the argument is that none of us
1709
01:11:50,239 --> 01:11:52,160
actually knows what's going to be great
1710
01:11:52,160 --> 01:11:55,580
in five years much less what's going to
1711
01:11:55,580 --> 01:11:58,100
be great in 25 years after all what did
1712
01:11:58,100 --> 01:11:59,119
Albert Einstein win
1713
01:11:59,119 --> 01:12:00,739
no price for anybody in this room
1714
01:12:00,739 --> 01:12:03,309
remember it's a couple of papers on on
1715
01:12:03,309 --> 01:12:07,399
temperature you didn't win the Nobel
1716
01:12:07,399 --> 01:12:10,070
Prize for relativity now you could argue
1717
01:12:10,070 --> 01:12:12,679
that winning the prize for the papers on
1718
01:12:12,679 --> 01:12:15,979
temperature was an indicator and so you
1719
01:12:15,979 --> 01:12:18,079
fund him and it'll invent relativity
1720
01:12:18,079 --> 01:12:20,709
well I don't know it's not sure
1721
01:12:20,709 --> 01:12:23,389
the reason the Disciplinary mechanism
1722
01:12:23,389 --> 01:12:25,399
and the departmental mechanism worked so
1723
01:12:25,399 --> 01:12:28,789
well it seems to me before the 20th
1724
01:12:28,789 --> 01:12:32,809
century project is that in a department
1725
01:12:32,809 --> 01:12:34,219
you had a bunch of people who were at
1726
01:12:34,219 --> 01:12:37,489
risk of becoming great and only one or
1727
01:12:37,489 --> 01:12:40,039
two of them would pan out but one or two
1728
01:12:40,039 --> 01:12:43,429
is what you need look at my own my
1729
01:12:43,429 --> 01:12:44,599
colleagues in the economics department
1730
01:12:44,599 --> 01:12:47,599
at the University of Chicago a wonderful
1731
01:12:47,599 --> 01:12:50,780
truly distinguished Department little
1732
01:12:50,780 --> 01:12:53,929
caricature today but it's a it's deep
1733
01:12:53,929 --> 01:12:56,119
down under department that has lived off
1734
01:12:56,119 --> 01:12:59,409
the contributions of about six people
1735
01:12:59,409 --> 01:13:02,869
over the last 80 years essentially Frank
1736
01:13:02,869 --> 01:13:04,059
Nigel's
1737
01:13:04,059 --> 01:13:06,860
Milton Friedman George Stigler Gary
1738
01:13:06,860 --> 01:13:11,869
Becker Bob Lucas it's not bad the reason
1739
01:13:11,869 --> 01:13:13,309
you had all those other people in the
1740
01:13:13,309 --> 01:13:15,739
department whose names you don't know
1741
01:13:15,739 --> 01:13:18,050
but I could recite them all you know
1742
01:13:18,050 --> 01:13:20,989
Lester tell Sir and D Gail Johnson and
1743
01:13:20,989 --> 01:13:22,399
the reason you have all those other
1744
01:13:22,399 --> 01:13:25,010
people is that well sometimes it pans
1745
01:13:25,010 --> 01:13:28,010
out and sometimes it doesn't so I think
1746
01:13:28,010 --> 01:13:31,820
the the difficulty for funders is you're
1747
01:13:31,820 --> 01:13:33,739
looking for something that's you know a
1748
01:13:33,739 --> 01:13:38,719
howling success and there is no way to
1749
01:13:38,719 --> 01:13:40,519
know that ahead of time and of course
1750
01:13:40,519 --> 01:13:42,919
it's also driven in part by the fact I'm
1751
01:13:42,919 --> 01:13:45,530
sorry to put you on the spot but as my
1752
01:13:45,530 --> 01:13:50,539
first dissertation student showed people
1753
01:13:50,539 --> 01:13:52,789
who are officers for funding operations
1754
01:13:52,789 --> 01:13:55,159
have themselves careers to make and
1755
01:13:55,159 --> 01:13:58,399
their careers are made by by having bets
1756
01:13:58,399 --> 01:14:00,769
that pay off pretty quickly so they have
1757
01:14:00,769 --> 01:14:03,649
a whole interest in funding new research
1758
01:14:03,649 --> 01:14:05,090
because nobody wants to fund old
1759
01:14:05,090 --> 01:14:06,469
research because it's you can't identify
1760
01:14:06,469 --> 01:14:09,769
it with you so one of the great problems
1761
01:14:09,769 --> 01:14:11,449
of the way the funding system works at
1762
01:14:11,449 --> 01:14:12,389
least in the United State
1763
01:14:12,389 --> 01:14:14,070
is that there's an enormous amount of
1764
01:14:14,070 --> 01:14:17,550
churn to it because the real way you
1765
01:14:17,550 --> 01:14:19,530
make great academic knowledge is to just
1766
01:14:19,530 --> 01:14:21,119
give a bunch of people a pile of money
1767
01:14:21,119 --> 01:14:23,159
and lock them in a room and say don't
1768
01:14:23,159 --> 01:14:24,149
come out until you've done some
1769
01:14:24,149 --> 01:14:26,280
interesting things that's the Bell Labs
1770
01:14:26,280 --> 01:14:29,849
model and that was for that was funded
1771
01:14:29,849 --> 01:14:32,039
by a national monopolies essentially so
1772
01:14:32,039 --> 01:14:34,559
it was part of the consent decree that
1773
01:14:34,559 --> 01:14:37,260
gave AT&T a monopoly of telephony in the
1774
01:14:37,260 --> 01:14:39,599
1930s that they would spend I think 2%
1775
01:14:39,599 --> 01:14:43,739
of gross profits on research now Bell
1776
01:14:43,739 --> 01:14:46,289
Labs is the source of half the
1777
01:14:46,289 --> 01:14:48,269
technology that drives the entire world
1778
01:14:48,269 --> 01:14:49,800
in fact of course because it's the
1779
01:14:49,800 --> 01:14:51,869
source of the transistor it's the source
1780
01:14:51,869 --> 01:14:53,429
of the one invention that makes
1781
01:14:53,429 --> 01:14:57,479
everything that we now do possible but
1782
01:14:57,479 --> 01:14:59,760
nobody's new oh this guy bill Shockley
1783
01:14:59,760 --> 01:15:01,139
he's gonna do it he's gonna figure it
1784
01:15:01,139 --> 01:15:02,849
out we're gonna fund him know Shockley
1785
01:15:02,849 --> 01:15:05,010
was one of many people they all ran into
1786
01:15:05,010 --> 01:15:06,209
each other and the idea of the
1787
01:15:06,209 --> 01:15:08,429
transistor cooked up basically one day
1788
01:15:08,429 --> 01:15:11,639
at lunch that's what you do you have to
1789
01:15:11,639 --> 01:15:13,699
just throw money at people in a sandbox
1790
01:15:13,699 --> 01:15:17,729
now it's pretty hard to tell a society
1791
01:15:17,729 --> 01:15:20,729
that's desperate for money for health
1792
01:15:20,729 --> 01:15:24,510
and welfare and roads and infrastructure
1793
01:15:24,510 --> 01:15:26,760
and well you just give money to these
1794
01:15:26,760 --> 01:15:29,519
guys and let them kind of play but in
1795
01:15:29,519 --> 01:15:32,189
fact that's what produced what happened
1796
01:15:32,189 --> 01:15:37,019
between 1870 and 1950 and you know we're
1797
01:15:37,019 --> 01:15:40,760
a bunch of footnotes to that basically
1798
01:15:40,760 --> 01:15:43,110
but that's what it took it just takes
1799
01:15:43,110 --> 01:15:46,530
this kind of that kind of system it's
1800
01:15:46,530 --> 01:15:47,760
not clear to me that that's going to
1801
01:15:47,760 --> 01:15:49,320
happen intellectuals are always looking
1802
01:15:49,320 --> 01:15:52,739
for a free ride that's no question and
1803
01:15:52,739 --> 01:15:54,119
they go where the money is that's why
1804
01:15:54,119 --> 01:15:55,559
the young people are going to Google now
1805
01:15:55,559 --> 01:15:57,780
because there's a ton of cash at Google
1806
01:15:57,780 --> 01:16:00,079
I mean they're just idiots I have some
1807
01:16:00,079 --> 01:16:03,149
friends who work there but you know you
1808
01:16:03,149 --> 01:16:04,499
got that much money eventually some
1809
01:16:04,499 --> 01:16:05,820
really smart people are going to show up
1810
01:16:05,820 --> 01:16:06,749
and they're gonna do some really
1811
01:16:06,749 --> 01:16:12,689
exciting things and it's gonna happen so
1812
01:16:12,689 --> 01:16:14,939
if you look one of the chapters of the
1813
01:16:14,939 --> 01:16:16,349
book I'm writing is essentially an
1814
01:16:16,349 --> 01:16:18,090
ecological history of where the
1815
01:16:18,090 --> 01:16:20,070
intellectuals have been because they
1816
01:16:20,070 --> 01:16:21,749
weren't always in universities in the
1817
01:16:21,749 --> 01:16:22,460
United States
1818
01:16:22,460 --> 01:16:24,530
the mid 19th century is no intellectuals
1819
01:16:24,530 --> 01:16:26,510
and universities to speak up at all you
1820
01:16:26,510 --> 01:16:29,030
know it's a few people at Harvard and a
1821
01:16:29,030 --> 01:16:30,469
few other places but mainly
1822
01:16:30,469 --> 01:16:31,969
intellectuals in those days were on the
1823
01:16:31,969 --> 01:16:34,190
lecture circuit the Lyceum circuit they
1824
01:16:34,190 --> 01:16:36,530
were eventually in Chautauqua they're
1825
01:16:36,530 --> 01:16:38,570
they're basically going around the
1826
01:16:38,570 --> 01:16:40,580
country giving thousands of lectures
1827
01:16:40,580 --> 01:16:42,350
were they basically charged by the seat
1828
01:16:42,350 --> 01:16:43,670
that sort of pre-vet that sentence
1829
01:16:43,670 --> 01:16:47,750
system kind of and then there's it's
1830
01:16:47,750 --> 01:16:49,550
actually much of intellectual life of
1831
01:16:49,550 --> 01:16:50,989
the 19th century in the United States
1832
01:16:50,989 --> 01:16:52,850
was essentially funded by the Protestant
1833
01:16:52,850 --> 01:16:54,680
churches because they had all these
1834
01:16:54,680 --> 01:16:56,239
clergymen who were highly educated
1835
01:16:56,239 --> 01:16:57,950
people and who didn't have enough to do
1836
01:16:57,950 --> 01:17:00,950
and they became the backbone of XE ology
1837
01:17:00,950 --> 01:17:04,520
and herpetology and all these botanical
1838
01:17:04,520 --> 01:17:07,790
and biological areas they were the
1839
01:17:07,790 --> 01:17:10,489
backbone of variable star astronomy for
1840
01:17:10,489 --> 01:17:13,010
example these guys they're all clergymen
1841
01:17:13,010 --> 01:17:16,130
if you read the old textbooks of you
1842
01:17:16,130 --> 01:17:18,440
know a field guide to the heavens 1905
1843
01:17:18,440 --> 01:17:20,080
it's just filled with religious
1844
01:17:20,080 --> 01:17:23,510
symbolism because it was all clergymen
1845
01:17:23,510 --> 01:17:24,710
who are doing this work it's quite
1846
01:17:24,710 --> 01:17:28,850
astonishing so you know the funders have
1847
01:17:28,850 --> 01:17:31,969
I sympathize with your problem and
1848
01:17:31,969 --> 01:17:33,920
there's one of the reasons I myself have
1849
01:17:33,920 --> 01:17:37,430
always tried to do cheap research it's
1850
01:17:37,430 --> 01:17:38,719
too much of a hassle to write grant
1851
01:17:38,719 --> 01:17:41,270
grant reports I know I don't function
1852
01:17:41,270 --> 01:17:44,390
well that way so all right thank you
1853
01:17:44,390 --> 01:17:51,650
with one question there I'm interested
1854
01:17:51,650 --> 01:17:55,660
if it helps to distinguish between like
1855
01:17:55,660 --> 01:18:00,830
sociological history of knowledge and of
1856
01:18:00,830 --> 01:18:02,630
course the structures who make it
1857
01:18:02,630 --> 01:18:05,239
possible especially University and the
1858
01:18:05,239 --> 01:18:09,380
images those systems and the people like
1859
01:18:09,380 --> 01:18:12,860
to have off themselves so I I had this
1860
01:18:12,860 --> 01:18:15,760
feeling like this associative thinking
1861
01:18:15,760 --> 01:18:18,590
is of course part of the image of
1862
01:18:18,590 --> 01:18:21,170
university an image of intellectualism
1863
01:18:21,170 --> 01:18:24,710
and I mean you've described yourself how
1864
01:18:24,710 --> 01:18:26,150
these structures who made it possible
1865
01:18:26,150 --> 01:18:31,210
have changed my feeling is that or
1866
01:18:31,210 --> 01:18:34,460
sometimes I feel like those structures
1867
01:18:34,460 --> 01:18:36,380
were more important
1868
01:18:36,380 --> 01:18:39,560
then what was possible with it which
1869
01:18:39,560 --> 01:18:42,170
what do I mean by this the structure of
1870
01:18:42,170 --> 01:18:45,230
university has changed you described all
1871
01:18:45,230 --> 01:18:48,200
the structural changes and it seems like
1872
01:18:48,200 --> 01:18:51,230
nothing is left of this thinking so I
1873
01:18:51,230 --> 01:18:53,630
feel like this this this this style of
1874
01:18:53,630 --> 01:18:56,270
thinking is not very strong at the
1875
01:18:56,270 --> 01:18:58,010
moment it seems like it was kind of a
1876
01:18:58,010 --> 01:19:02,750
luxury and I think people could do I
1877
01:19:02,750 --> 01:19:05,150
mean this is of course you said it
1878
01:19:05,150 --> 01:19:07,400
yourself part of it that not a lot of
1879
01:19:07,400 --> 01:19:11,390
people did it and of course there was
1880
01:19:11,390 --> 01:19:14,450
like a division of power in in the
1881
01:19:14,450 --> 01:19:18,200
society and between yeah between the
1882
01:19:18,200 --> 01:19:20,750
different actors and science with with a
1883
01:19:20,750 --> 01:19:24,410
big a capital s of course had its role
1884
01:19:24,410 --> 01:19:28,130
there of an authoritarian and knowledge
1885
01:19:28,130 --> 01:19:34,250
and yeah my my my question is why why is
1886
01:19:34,250 --> 01:19:38,630
it so bad that this changes maybe maybe
1887
01:19:38,630 --> 01:19:41,470
some some of the images that were
1888
01:19:41,470 --> 01:19:45,920
existent until recently just yeah we're
1889
01:19:45,920 --> 01:19:49,610
just images well there's several
1890
01:19:49,610 --> 01:19:52,580
different things in there I guess let me
1891
01:19:52,580 --> 01:19:55,610
just if I two of them so the first one
1892
01:19:55,610 --> 01:19:57,560
is associate the concept of associate of
1893
01:19:57,560 --> 01:19:59,960
knowing I actually think this is a
1894
01:19:59,960 --> 01:20:04,070
pretty important concept so when and
1895
01:20:04,070 --> 01:20:05,870
it's something that there's no theory of
1896
01:20:05,870 --> 01:20:08,030
in information sciences that I can see
1897
01:20:08,030 --> 01:20:10,670
at all you know when I look at a text of
1898
01:20:10,670 --> 01:20:15,410
Adam Smith the entire text is blue with
1899
01:20:15,410 --> 01:20:18,320
hyperlinks that's because the hyperlinks
1900
01:20:18,320 --> 01:20:20,630
are in my mind I see certain words and I
1901
01:20:20,630 --> 01:20:22,580
say oh yeah Hobbs said that oh yeah oh
1902
01:20:22,580 --> 01:20:24,530
yeah oh yeah that's because the stuff is
1903
01:20:24,530 --> 01:20:26,930
in my head there's no model for that an
1904
01:20:26,930 --> 01:20:28,220
information science where they talk
1905
01:20:28,220 --> 01:20:32,000
about how a group of people who process
1906
01:20:32,000 --> 01:20:35,760
process texts that way can function so I
1907
01:20:35,760 --> 01:20:37,140
actually think that's a pretty important
1908
01:20:37,140 --> 01:20:39,840
in many ways that's the central you know
1909
01:20:39,840 --> 01:20:41,790
sort of new conceptual concept in this
1910
01:20:41,790 --> 01:20:43,890
talk is a note this notion of
1911
01:20:43,890 --> 01:20:46,520
associative knowing as a kind of knowing
1912
01:20:46,520 --> 01:20:49,350
now I mean you really run across this
1913
01:20:49,350 --> 01:20:52,680
when you are trying to teach a text like
1914
01:20:52,680 --> 01:20:54,810
The Wealth of Nations to eighteen year
1915
01:20:54,810 --> 01:20:56,790
olds who don't have anything like the
1916
01:20:56,790 --> 01:20:58,830
stuff you have in your head and it's
1917
01:20:58,830 --> 01:21:01,170
very hard for you to figure out what it
1918
01:21:01,170 --> 01:21:03,090
is that they are reading what is the
1919
01:21:03,090 --> 01:21:05,160
experience they are having as they read
1920
01:21:05,160 --> 01:21:08,730
now we all had this experience when we
1921
01:21:08,730 --> 01:21:10,620
read The Wealth of Nations for the first
1922
01:21:10,620 --> 01:21:15,720
time and what's interesting is that in
1923
01:21:15,720 --> 01:21:18,660
the in the actual writing style of
1924
01:21:18,660 --> 01:21:21,960
canonical scholarship of that sort there
1925
01:21:21,960 --> 01:21:23,790
were particular ways in which you
1926
01:21:23,790 --> 01:21:26,250
suggested to the reader this is
1927
01:21:26,250 --> 01:21:29,280
something you need to look up now one of
1928
01:21:29,280 --> 01:21:30,510
the ways you did that was by you
1929
01:21:30,510 --> 01:21:32,550
referred to Hobbes you didn't say Thomas
1930
01:21:32,550 --> 01:21:35,400
Hobbes you just referred to Hobbes and
1931
01:21:35,400 --> 01:21:37,350
the person would say oh there's no first
1932
01:21:37,350 --> 01:21:39,210
name no first name means I'm supposed to
1933
01:21:39,210 --> 01:21:39,960
know who this is
1934
01:21:39,960 --> 01:21:42,540
and of course nowadays you could of
1935
01:21:42,540 --> 01:21:44,070
course go off to the internet and find
1936
01:21:44,070 --> 01:21:47,190
out who old Tommy Hobbs was but you know
1937
01:21:47,190 --> 01:21:48,990
you used to just go to Encyclopedia or
1938
01:21:48,990 --> 01:21:52,650
make a note I think that it's pretty
1939
01:21:52,650 --> 01:21:56,880
essential to realize that in most cases
1940
01:21:56,880 --> 01:22:00,720
serious thought does require presence in
1941
01:22:00,720 --> 01:22:03,060
the central processing unit of a large
1942
01:22:03,060 --> 01:22:05,940
body of related information which is
1943
01:22:05,940 --> 01:22:07,470
going to be brought into the process
1944
01:22:07,470 --> 01:22:09,810
there's just no thinking about this in
1945
01:22:09,810 --> 01:22:11,820
this kind of straight out algorithms way
1946
01:22:11,820 --> 01:22:13,620
of approaching thought so that's that's
1947
01:22:13,620 --> 01:22:16,650
that issue so I I think that's pretty
1948
01:22:16,650 --> 01:22:20,280
important now I wasn't quite clear about
1949
01:22:20,280 --> 01:22:21,570
all the things you were saying in the
1950
01:22:21,570 --> 01:22:24,360
second half were the second part of your
1951
01:22:24,360 --> 01:22:27,390
comment there's no question that this
1952
01:22:27,390 --> 01:22:29,490
the stuff that was invented by the 20th
1953
01:22:29,490 --> 01:22:31,080
century project like the stuff that was
1954
01:22:31,080 --> 01:22:32,880
just invented by the 19th century
1955
01:22:32,880 --> 01:22:34,710
project was often put to some pretty
1956
01:22:34,710 --> 01:22:38,520
dire uses after all you know classical
1957
01:22:38,520 --> 01:22:41,190
scholarship emerged in great strength in
1958
01:22:41,190 --> 01:22:42,750
this country and then was absolutely
1959
01:22:42,750 --> 01:22:45,170
central to the nationalist projects
1960
01:22:45,170 --> 01:22:48,440
of the second right so and we know that
1961
01:22:48,440 --> 01:22:49,940
these these and in fact that's where
1962
01:22:49,940 --> 01:22:51,440
much of the money came from was to
1963
01:22:51,440 --> 01:22:54,080
produce this kind of stuff I'm not
1964
01:22:54,080 --> 01:22:58,580
trying to make any claim that there's
1965
01:22:58,580 --> 01:23:00,560
something fundamentally moral or what
1966
01:23:00,560 --> 01:23:05,870
one way or another about about knowledge
1967
01:23:05,870 --> 01:23:07,400
from what might call knowledge for
1968
01:23:07,400 --> 01:23:10,130
itself I do actually think that in the
1969
01:23:10,130 --> 01:23:12,199
Social Sciences one of the big changes
1970
01:23:12,199 --> 01:23:15,920
we have to face is that we have to get
1971
01:23:15,920 --> 01:23:23,210
quite serious about dealing with the
1972
01:23:23,210 --> 01:23:24,910
problem that all social knowledge
1973
01:23:24,910 --> 01:23:28,699
inevitably involves values and I don't
1974
01:23:28,699 --> 01:23:30,679
say this in some sort of debunking kind
1975
01:23:30,679 --> 01:23:32,600
of way the way the Edinburgh School was
1976
01:23:32,600 --> 01:23:35,390
busy debunking you know scientific norms
1977
01:23:35,390 --> 01:23:39,380
of Robert Merton you know the man who
1978
01:23:39,380 --> 01:23:41,600
separated in fact and value of course
1979
01:23:41,600 --> 01:23:43,850
this is the greatest philosopher of this
1980
01:23:43,850 --> 01:23:47,330
country and tried to put them back
1981
01:23:47,330 --> 01:23:49,900
together again in the third critique and
1982
01:23:49,900 --> 01:23:53,179
didn't quite succeed and we're basically
1983
01:23:53,179 --> 01:23:55,160
all trying to do that I do think that's
1984
01:23:55,160 --> 01:23:56,600
one of the fundamental things to the
1985
01:23:56,600 --> 01:23:59,770
social sciences have to do in the next
1986
01:23:59,770 --> 01:24:03,380
50 years so this comes to your point and
1987
01:24:03,380 --> 01:24:05,110
that is something that I am definitely
1988
01:24:05,110 --> 01:24:07,850
making central in my own work in the
1989
01:24:07,850 --> 01:24:11,210
next few years so I'm also for example
1990
01:24:11,210 --> 01:24:15,340
arguing that sociology should acquire a
1991
01:24:15,340 --> 01:24:19,040
normative sub discipline that does the
1992
01:24:19,040 --> 01:24:20,780
same thing for sociology a political
1993
01:24:20,780 --> 01:24:24,580
theory does for the field of politics
1994
01:24:24,580 --> 01:24:27,650
it's not clear to me how that normative
1995
01:24:27,650 --> 01:24:29,179
field should be organized but I think we
1996
01:24:29,179 --> 01:24:32,239
have to especially in the United States
1997
01:24:32,239 --> 01:24:34,250
we have to deal with the kind of
1998
01:24:34,250 --> 01:24:38,300
craziness of politicization by creating
1999
01:24:38,300 --> 01:24:41,570
some form of responsible normative
2000
01:24:41,570 --> 01:24:43,640
inquiry now whether it's going to take
2001
01:24:43,640 --> 01:24:47,150
the form of commentary on a Canon which
2002
01:24:47,150 --> 01:24:49,670
is the way political theory works or
2003
01:24:49,670 --> 01:24:51,320
whether it'll take the form some sort of
2004
01:24:51,320 --> 01:24:52,850
form that looks like English common law
2005
01:24:52,850 --> 01:24:55,280
where people get a whole bunch of books
2006
01:24:55,280 --> 01:24:56,929
together and say here at
2007
01:24:56,929 --> 01:24:59,809
books on household division of labor
2008
01:24:59,809 --> 01:25:01,729
what theory of morality was applied in
2009
01:25:01,729 --> 01:25:03,650
this book and theory in this book and
2010
01:25:03,650 --> 01:25:05,209
theory in this book and then what is the
2011
01:25:05,209 --> 01:25:07,749
best idea of an AI concept of morality
2012
01:25:07,749 --> 01:25:11,420
for thinking about the family division
2013
01:25:11,420 --> 01:25:13,999
of labor so it seems to me we could have
2014
01:25:13,999 --> 01:25:15,679
a discipline that worked like that but I
2015
01:25:15,679 --> 01:25:20,719
think we the the fact that the Social
2016
01:25:20,719 --> 01:25:23,570
Sciences are fundamentally involved in a
2017
01:25:23,570 --> 01:25:26,510
valued and political Enterprise has to
2018
01:25:26,510 --> 01:25:31,249
be accepted and and I would say
2019
01:25:31,249 --> 01:25:33,559
methodologies it has to be dealt with as
2020
01:25:33,559 --> 01:25:36,769
a fundamental condition of the kind of
2021
01:25:36,769 --> 01:25:41,300
work we do in which you don't have as we
2022
01:25:41,300 --> 01:25:42,829
have in the United States just openly
2023
01:25:42,829 --> 01:25:46,039
political stuff that's essentially a
2024
01:25:46,039 --> 01:25:48,999
fair amount of scholarship that's simply
2025
01:25:48,999 --> 01:25:51,469
in favor of this or that particular
2026
01:25:51,469 --> 01:25:53,030
group that the writer favours well
2027
01:25:53,030 --> 01:25:55,760
that's fine but you know there is there
2028
01:25:55,760 --> 01:25:57,349
is a more disciplined way of thinking
2029
01:25:57,349 --> 01:25:58,789
about that and historically it's been
2030
01:25:58,789 --> 01:26:01,760
characteristic of legal systems in that
2031
01:26:01,760 --> 01:26:03,860
sense you know it pushes us back to Marx
2032
01:26:03,860 --> 01:26:06,079
Weber which is kind of strange because
2033
01:26:06,079 --> 01:26:08,570
it's Weber who says that you know we can
2034
01:26:08,570 --> 01:26:10,429
think of is nichelle House bill wolf we
2035
01:26:10,429 --> 01:26:13,880
can think about separating this novel
2036
01:26:13,880 --> 01:26:15,619
spoof in public gossip if we can have
2037
01:26:15,619 --> 01:26:18,260
separate facts and values but Weber
2038
01:26:18,260 --> 01:26:20,239
himself in fact got much of his
2039
01:26:20,239 --> 01:26:23,929
theoretical arm armament from phony
2040
01:26:23,929 --> 01:26:28,189
airing and yelling was a legal theorist
2041
01:26:28,189 --> 01:26:31,849
a historian of jurisprudence and of
2042
01:26:31,849 --> 01:26:34,249
juridical systems so it's kind of
2043
01:26:34,249 --> 01:26:36,349
interesting that Weber who starts out
2044
01:26:36,349 --> 01:26:38,630
from the strong legal background ends up
2045
01:26:38,630 --> 01:26:41,329
writing about how separately we're going
2046
01:26:41,329 --> 01:26:44,179
to treat facts and values it's a very
2047
01:26:44,179 --> 01:26:46,099
sort of neo-kantian position I realized
2048
01:26:46,099 --> 01:26:50,360
but I do think that this the the Frank
2049
01:26:50,360 --> 01:26:54,110
recognition of the value aspects of the
2050
01:26:54,110 --> 01:26:58,039
social sciences and the open embrace of
2051
01:26:58,039 --> 01:27:00,199
that in some disciplined and rigorous
2052
01:27:00,199 --> 01:27:02,840
fashion for which the law gives us an
2053
01:27:02,840 --> 01:27:05,090
example I think that's a necessity in
2054
01:27:05,090 --> 01:27:08,210
the next 50 years
2055
01:27:08,210 --> 01:27:11,800
thank you we have time for one short
2056
01:27:11,800 --> 01:27:15,550
question and one short response please
2057
01:27:15,550 --> 01:27:22,280
okay well well my question actually goes
2058
01:27:22,280 --> 01:27:23,630
to understanding your argument
2059
01:27:23,630 --> 01:27:25,940
particularly about these two trends that
2060
01:27:25,940 --> 01:27:27,860
you were talking about is irreversible
2061
01:27:27,860 --> 01:27:29,540
the rise of the social knowledge and
2062
01:27:29,540 --> 01:27:32,090
also the organizational sort of form of
2063
01:27:32,090 --> 01:27:33,530
knowledge which particularly with the
2064
01:27:33,530 --> 01:27:35,840
latter you say it's basically due to
2065
01:27:35,840 --> 01:27:39,170
efficiency pressures and you also say
2066
01:27:39,170 --> 01:27:43,040
that it's inimical to basically both
2067
01:27:43,040 --> 01:27:45,140
discursive and Association of no
2068
01:27:45,140 --> 01:27:47,540
knowledge and I was just wondering about
2069
01:27:47,540 --> 01:27:49,700
that because I would have thought that
2070
01:27:49,700 --> 01:27:52,130
both discursive and associational
2071
01:27:52,130 --> 01:27:54,530
knowledge are inherently collaborative
2072
01:27:54,530 --> 01:27:58,340
and conversational so by emphasizing the
2073
01:27:58,340 --> 01:28:00,620
sort of the efficiency explanation for
2074
01:28:00,620 --> 01:28:02,600
the rise of organizational knowledge are
2075
01:28:02,600 --> 01:28:05,510
you not kind of you know omitting this
2076
01:28:05,510 --> 01:28:08,300
this this this other reason which might
2077
01:28:08,300 --> 01:28:10,430
be which you might be more sympathetic
2078
01:28:10,430 --> 01:28:13,700
to yes I am but that's because I was
2079
01:28:13,700 --> 01:28:15,770
being too worried about time and so when
2080
01:28:15,770 --> 01:28:17,600
I gave that summary I skipped that part
2081
01:28:17,600 --> 01:28:21,260
of that sentence as it happens it's a
2082
01:28:21,260 --> 01:28:23,390
kind of cheap answer but that's that's
2083
01:28:23,390 --> 01:28:25,730
in fact what what's going on as you know
2084
01:28:25,730 --> 01:28:27,740
I I hope you all realize this is
2085
01:28:27,740 --> 01:28:29,600
essentially it's the talk is meant to be
2086
01:28:29,600 --> 01:28:31,880
a provocation there's a lot of serious
2087
01:28:31,880 --> 01:28:35,720
facts and analysis behind it but you
2088
01:28:35,720 --> 01:28:39,830
know I'm too old to be polite anymore so
2089
01:28:39,830 --> 01:28:45,350
it's time to so any case thanks for
2090
01:28:45,350 --> 01:28:46,490
these questions are very helpful and
2091
01:28:46,490 --> 01:28:48,890
interesting thank you very much thank
2092
01:28:48,890 --> 01:28:51,190
you all
2093
01:28:54,860 --> 01:28:57,680
[Applause]
2094
01:28:57,680 --> 01:29:01,440
thank you thank you all for being here
2095
01:29:01,440 --> 01:29:04,340
thank you and rabbit we will have a
2096
01:29:04,340 --> 01:29:07,949
small reception outside but before you
2097
01:29:07,949 --> 01:29:10,770
go to the reception you could Google out
2098
01:29:10,770 --> 01:29:15,080
for example our network's website
2099
01:29:16,219 --> 01:29:23,040
www.house.gov/paul under no actually our
2100
01:29:23,040 --> 01:29:24,780
feature occur a Twitter account I don't
2101
01:29:24,780 --> 01:29:28,800
know someone does so if you want to know
2102
01:29:28,800 --> 01:29:31,710
who we are what we do and what our
2103
01:29:31,710 --> 01:29:34,800
conferences are about Google us and see
2104
01:29:34,800 --> 01:29:38,030
you later at your reception thank you
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