“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me,” said Isaac Newton.
Pursuing of meaning of science is abstractly difficult; establishing a new science and discovering its meaning are even by far arduous. Living in Penn State’s Information Sciences of Technology (IST) research community, I strongly believe, is not merely to just indulge in non pre-existing academic paradigm which is taking advantages of three perspectives: Information, technology, and people, but to strengthen the discipline, make I-School visible to all other traditional disciplines, and recruit more powerful participation to I-communities.
IST, hosting the first I-School conference, initiated the novelty paradigmatic program and still is continuing the pursuit for ten years. As Dr. Jim Tomas conveys that IST offer a Greenfield program which evolves from no pre-existing forms . Being non pre-existing, however, educationally creates far-reaching impacts and influences toward knowledge communities upon the definition and the identity of I-school.
As much as IST curriculum has been crafted to be interdisciplinary, the technology perspective seems to dominate scholars’ perception. Technology, whose descent line was from hard science school of computer science and engineering, inevitably philosophically coexists with positivism and, furthermore, a little bit dominate the ITP triangle. Positivism has long been escorted to facilitate a very large array of research, particularly in hard science, since hard scientists have developed a very strong assumption before put their assumption on test. However, the fruitfulness of positivistic finding may be less appreciable when we ponder upon ITP perspective because each perspective tends to prejudicially seeks for supports that make sense in their own disciplinary interpretation.
One of classic issues worth to be discussed in IST community is the case of digital media files: electronic books, music, movie, etc. While technology perspective regards a music file as a long stream of bits, information perspective considers the file as intellectual digital content which should be of protection by copyrights laws. And people perspective may further add that the file is in turn having a huge impact in societal levels, such a file should be well-studied before putting it into use. Seemingly, combining I, T, and P with using only positivistic adhesive may render IST’s interdisciplinary curriculum into a mere multidisciplinary one which highly proves to be problematic and undermine being interdisciplinary instilled by the I-School itself.
Nevertheless, it would greatly be a misconstruing if we totally reject positivism and, therefore, forgo one of the most attractively useful feature of positivism: Falsification. Falsification, especially sophisticated falsification, is one plausible way to make science firmly grown up. For instance, Aristotelian mechanics explained observations of everyday situations, were falsified by Galileo’s experiments, and finally were replaced by Newtonian mechanics. Falsification of course turns a wheel of the evolution of science, for only robust statements and theories would last until an incoming falsification next round. However, falsification will fully be in effect when there are enough clues or facts to be falsified, and, and top of that, it also requires us to absorb inherent metaphysics and axioms, the predefined basic statements non-falsifiable.
Apparently, falsification empirically and theoretically helps well-developed premises to root even deeper and stronger. But how I-School is possibly benefited from falsification is another story. IST, Dr. Jim Thomas asserted, a non pre-existing program, and how could we therefore put a never-existing-before on test on the faith of falsification? A true relief in response to this question is we have to procedurally make a small move and figure out how we can make the fullest use of such falsification. While being interdisciplinary of I-School is being concerned, there is a viable idea to fortify three roots of I-School themselves, I, T, and P, by putting them on “test.” Once theses elementary pieces are well-established, they will be able create a firm gravity for the “grounded one.”
In order to make science to move forward, especially a new science just like I-School interdisciplinary, we cannot traditionally adhere ourselves to only a single school of thought. I-School is practically an integral piece of three perspectives, so we have to not be open to all the criticism from broad knowledge communities, but also absorb the criticism seriously. Often times we find that I-School researches seem a lot like a non-proportionate mixture of I, T, and P. And it would be unfortunately precarious to totally reject those researches since, in order to advance in a new science, we have to relax it and let a new science grow. By this means, we are practicing normal science to cradle I-School.
To establish a lesser known I-School, we should let I-communities to create their space to practice the I-School offers. It is always chaotic for a young science in its beginning phase, and it always takes some time to have it well-established. Furthermore, living in I-School paradigm means that we have to have faith in what we are doing, too, since we have to detach ourselves from using one perspective (out of ITP) to interpret any issue, and it may be problematic in some occasion. So far we can still find that information-technology and people perspectives are competing each other, and many arguments arose from scholarly discourses. Theorizing socio-technical systems and socio-informatics illustrates an attempt to capture and reconcile the interplay between IT and P perspectives.
Socio-technical theory, for example, an approach to complex organizational work design that recognizes the interaction between people and technology in workplaces, is one of the most common theories being taught in I-School. As social scientists painstakingly studied the interplay between IT and P, they were encountering a very hard time to well balance between technical standpoint and social aspect. Ironically, the more they were deepening in the study, the more they were discovering they were by far heavily leaning toward sociology side.
In order to regain the gravity of the interplay between technical standpoint and social aspect, second round was arranged, and the birth was given to socio-informatics. Soon later, socio-informatics scientists found they were just walking down the same history path that socio-informatics scientists had been going through before. For this time, the disposition was toward technical side. Again, the history ran on the same path as did socio-technical theory.
Are the two rounds of an attempt to pursue the interplay between IT and P totally wasted? Absolutely not. All the consequences discovered tell us what we have mistakenly preceded so for. And we are therefore able to develop and deepen our understanding of how our mind could prejudicially be made of. It is quite beyond our perception that what the result of the new round of an attempt to study the interplay would have become. But at least what we can warrant is that we will have been learning a lot more. And this is the reason why we should indulge in our space and continue practicing normal science in I-School. However, we have to surrender to the fact we may inevitably leave alone certain unsolved anomalies, such as unfolding interplay between IT and P sides. I-School’s paradigm is not necessary to explain everything. But it is viable enough to resolve pressing need to approach certain phenomenon.
Under the paradigmatic umbrella of I-School, this does mean that it is suggested that I surrender to the anomalies, but to be living with this ambiguity as we are developing the identity of I-School. Recruiting more fellow to join research community is a way to gain I-School’s visibility over time. Community is profitable not only in making I-School visibly, but also shaping, validating, verifying, and purify I-School’s discipline. It might be possible that I-School is going to outgrowth into many paradigms redundant. Fortuitously, society will ultimately put them on test on the fact of the faith of each paradigm itself. Totally, accepting or rejecting a paradigm is not scientifically exclusive. Rather, it is a social process taking into account community’s consensus, choosing for the best one which could be fitted in and working out at the time.
As we have seen so far, practicing normal science in I-School expedites the growth of its own, for it lets I-communities to tolerate to the indescribable phenomenon, and at the same time nurtures I-School establishment. On the other hand, positivistic falsification helps strengthen firm-established science since falsification process will repeatedly test candidate theories. But falsification is, unfortunately, threatening to a new science because it tends to curtail growth of new science in its infancy.
As I-School is interdisciplinary and relatively new, we have to be open to all the criticisms, from broad research communities. However, digesting these criticisms might be not always helpful if they are potentially going to destabilize the pillar of I-School. The core of I-School should be protected since it is a very key mechanism that moves the science forward. If I-communities overly make a revision of the core according to the criticisms, they might have found they are about to be straying away for their goal, establishing I-School’s identity and to advance in I-School paradigm.
This cautious reminder signifies that we inescapably have to occasionally, deliberately pay less attention to criticisms upon certain anomalistic phenomenon and the core of I-School paradigm. I-School’s paradigm at the beginning might seem unable to provide satisfied facts and respond to the criticisms. But in the long it may prove promising and ultimately collectively clarify all the blind spots, supplying rational answers. As the core’s auxiliary facts are growing, we can these augmented facts to cope with the unanswerable phenomenon. The point, that I would like to point out so far, hereby is to relax our concerns about seeking for responses for critical questions against the core of the I-School.
Notwithstanding other traditional disciplines may challenge the idea against the advantages of protecting the core: How a true evolution of I-School could be developed, how we could say that we are practicing normal science in sage if I-School, and how we could be open-minded if we avoid criticizing the heart of I-School. This implies that we cannot merely practice normal science in I-School, collect all the anomalies appearing in our paradigm, wait until someone notices that the residue anomalies are too large enough to cause a crisis toward a paradigm, and finally realize that we have to seek for a paradigm shift to move forward practicing I-School. If we say so, the evolution of I-School may cost many generations of human life-time since the process of practicing normal science does cyclically take some time.
To free the limitation of practicing normal science in school for advancing in I-School’s discipline, we have to surrender the core of the I-School to be criticized, so the revolution of I-School could be more promising. By compromising the protection of I-School’s core, we can simultaneously adjust our discipline, and make it more open to reflections from research communities at large from relevant disciplines. For example, the case of failure to pursue the interplay between IT and P perspectives (socio-technological systems and socio-informatics) illustrates how we could benefits from openness to a criticism at I-School’s core.
If we prejudicially had rejected the hard criticism again socio-technological system and socio-informatics, we would have had no clues what went wrong with the two theories being pervasively taught in I-School. Another benefit from making I-School’s core open to criticisms is that we can take control over the discipline we created, not letting the discipline take control over us. Although tenacity is a very quality for I-communities to develop identity, it could deviously drive us to nowhere or to the way initially unintended.
To understand what we “should” practice in I-School, we also need to retrospectively consider the history of how the three perspectives emerge and contemplate upon the spirit of interdisciplinary research program. That is, we have to historically examine what is the objective of all the traditional components in our interdisciplinary program by drawing all the relevant premises from the thinkers in the past. Discourses from each discipline and dialogue between disciplines are actually important resources to incubate inter-discipline program in I-School. Utilizing and applying the traditions in new way of thinking can bring a new interpretation of the interaction between each element in the ITP triangle, and therefore we can gain new insight toward the interplay accordingly. Creatively and meaningfully interpreting of basic elementary disciplines gives us a freedom to be indulging in seeking what we can make use of those primers; let’s the tradition speak up for themselves. Freely interpreting the basic elementary disciplines brings about not only applications, but also questions, controversies, and debates that they are about to be bound over time through the filtering process which I-communities select for them.
All things considered, in order to move the I-School forward, I-community is the most important factor. The community must be very strong in order to survey all the challenges. This means we have to recruit superior participants who are able to work harder than those in other traditional disciplines. Participants, in this context, are faculty members, researchers, and students who must be very well-aware that they are about to create a reverberating impact upon a new history of science. They must seek for interpretation of the primers, digest all the criticisms and questions, and shape up I-School’s discipline over time. Moreover, the participants, in order to gain the identity, have to be fervently engaging academic communities to create the space for I-community and to push forward proliferation of what I-School can offer to academic and professional communities. Participants must show that any kind of investments in I-School is promising, and the return will be collectively profitable in long run.
In conclusion, in my opinion, if we really want to see I-School making a move, the first priority pursuit we have to thrive is to seriously adhere to the spirit of the discipline. The second priority is to proactively engage broader research communities at large. And finally, we have to make sure that we ourselves are walking on the right path, and ultimately all the issues regarding the I-School movement will be resolved by their own selves.
