[Air-l] Web Science a Field of Study

[Jeremy Hunsinger]

>
>
>   "The web itself should be independent of the social... the first  
> order, it should be not an institution but a completely blank piece  
> of paper, a medium upon which society can do what it needs to do  
> and what it wants to do." TBL

this is a normative claim not a factual claim.
>
>   From a research or scholarly point of view nothing is lost by  
> seperating the technology from what human behavior is conducted  
> using the technology. In some respects TBL is saying that the  
> Internet is a blackboard on which great things are created. It is  
> our job as scholars to bring illumination to how it is used.

This would be a false claim, as it universalizes one somewhat rarely  
accepted viewpoint.   From a scholarly point of view, indeed from  
most scholarly points of view, many things are lost by claiming  
separation between technics and civilization.  In fact, what is lost  
upon separation is most of the explanatory power...
>
>   It is unnecessary to disparage the contribution of TBL past or  
> present to express disagreement. Whatever his motive and whenever  
> it occured TBL has more stature than the bulk of us and comments  
> below do not show collegiality and cross-disciplinarity to the  
> world community.

i think you will find that appeal to expertise is a common rhetorical  
strategy and the way you actually use it above might even be called a  
common fallacy.

>   I remind you all that Elijah has a habit of calling people names  
> and discrediting them. Do the rules and the interests of us all not  
> apply to flaming someone who is not a part of this body.

Personally, i did not see him flame you, but I am beginning to  
suspect that you might be someone acting under a pseudonym, which is  
clearly against the list rules.   Do you have a vita or other way of  
verifying your identity that you could share?

What I did see him do was call to task MIT's perpetual claim to being  
the first, which seems to be part of their marketing regime...  Take  
someone else's major idea that has been happening for many years,  
then claim you are doing something new...  They tend to do this, many  
people realize it and it should always be questioned and critiqued as  
it perpetuates their own internal mythos and implicitly devalues the  
work of groups outside of MIT who actually originate the work they  
later claim.  For instance, who else remembers UCLA's courseware  
project?
>
>   In my opinion TBL has it right. He should know because he single  
> handed gave us a gift of the world we are supposed to be researching

That is a false statement, please learn the history of the web, it  
was created by several teams of people, of which TBL was a  
significant figure in one.    (well, your opinion is your opinion,  
the rest is false)

>

have a nice day

Jeremy Hunsinger
School of Library and Information Science
Pratt Institute
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