I was chatting with Rebecca Kukla a couple weeks ago about things we would like to do with a second edition of Yo&Lo and the following general thought occurred to me. When it comes to books that people are interested in, we have roughly two distinct media forms for philosophical interaction. We have the printed book itself, and sometimes later printed articles and reviews. And we have lots of discussions - in conferences, symposia, classes, etc. The former are permanent, but fixed - non-dialogical. The latter are interactive and dialogical, but ephemeral. Once they are over, they exist only in the memory of participants. (And if we make a web-cast of the event, then it flips to the first category.
Over time, lots and lots of responses can accumulate. One might ask for clarification from the author, who can also do so. The original text will be preserved, but it becomes the initiation of an ongoing debate that is fully available for other scholars to look at.
Why isn't this just better?
And this is just one way that online books are better (though it seems like a way that applies to any philosophy book worth talking about). There are lots of obvious advantages - say the ability to put in hyperlinks to psych experiments, other books, historical pictures, music - whatever is relevant. And these are just ideas off the top of a 53 year old head. Surely clever young 'uns who actually know something about the ways this technology works can think of way more.
These advantages are independent of whether one thinks, as I do, that research should be open-source or capitalist. One can put things behind pay-walls if you like. One can also imagine moderating the discussions. (I suspect the value of the stickies would be undercut if we allowed trolls to toss in masses of them, thus making it lots of work to find the useful discussions. But we could require verifiable names on the comments, or let the author moderate, or let someone at the press do it.)
Finally, note that this would very easily give a nice method of documenting whether someone's book was generating interest in the profession. Citation-counts are of some use, but the reality is that for someone coming up for tenure, say, the timing of conventional publication is such that it is very unlikely that a book will get substantial published uptake. But one can easily imagine that in a few months a really good book would generate a healthy online discussion among top people in a field.
Seems like something publishers ought to jump on. But if not, well, let's just do it ourselves.
Recent Comments