Skip navigation

Monthly Archives: September 2009

Hybridizing Culture through Code and the Creation of a Transnational Knowledge Class.

This paper presents the theory that software code and the practice of coding is a system of communication above and beyond the code itself. It posits that the language and practices of coding are a method that allows knowledge and culture to move from one cultural milieu to another, and creates through that movement, a transnational coding culture that is built upon the shared experiences and understandings that surround coding practices. By analyzing the modes of cultural transmission available to a particular group of programmers that use the internet extensively, I show that these modes tend to discipline and educate, and slowly indoctrinate newer members into the community of knowledge that embodies this transnational class. This power of code to bridge and then hybridize cultures is significant in that it is highly formalized and rigorous, and thus provides a stable platform for coding expertise to transition, however, as we will see coding expertise is not all that becomes hybridized.


Moving from Interdisciplinarity to Transdisciplinarity information studies

In this paper, I argue that Information Schools are on the cusp of a very difficult transition. The ubiquity of information is pervading previously disciplinary endeavors. Not only is computing found in all disciplines, both in general use, but also in fields such as Humanities computing, Social Science computing/E-Social Science, Biological systems computing, but so is information and information technology, with parallel fields. Those fields are traditionally interdisciplinary in nature, in which people use techniques, methods, and knowledges from different fields and use them to produce new knowledge. A transdisciplinary field is different, it’s object of study cannot be captured by interdisciplinary techniques, It requires the development of new foundations, such as those found in informational concepts and models. Transdisciplinary fields are ones in which the globality of the object cannot be fully understood from any single disciplinary or interdisciplinary perspective. The conceptual and thus linguistic tools for understanding

The transdisciplinary opportunities of information science and technology were noted before, (Lyotard). They were a popular in certain optimistic and utopian discourse from the 1970′s and 1980′s, until the popularization and formalization of commodity computing and specialized tools transformed many viewpoints away. The discourse of transdisciplinary informatics still exists in the background of many discussions. As informatics has pervaded other disciplines with the growing number of hobbyists and hackers, a new set of institutional transformations is arising. This institutional transformation could have significant effects on information schools, either opening up a world of opportunity or isolate them