Many different influences impinge on the creation of knowledge. Evolutionary-cybernetic
epistemology as explored by the Principia Cyberneticia Project (http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/ ) is concerned with the
broad domain of cybernetics and general systems theory (Bertalanffy 1968), and
specifically the transdisciplinary study of organizations, communication, control and
modeling (Heylighen 1993, 1997). Their metasystem design theory identifies three
"super classes" of influence that embody understanding and development of
holistic knowledge: the objective, subjective, and intersubjective.
Objective knowledge is derived from an external object, is measured by the reliability
of predictions to which it leads, and is judged by the criteria of distinctiveness,
invariance, and controllability. Subjective knowledge is the measure of ease with which
knowledge is individually accepted, and is judged by individual utility, coherence,
complexity, and novelty. Intersubjective knowledge is a measure of fitness of knowledge
with respect to the community of carriers, and is measured by formality, conformity,
infectiousness or publicity, expressivity, collective utility, and authority (http://pespmc1.bub.ac.be/KNOWSELC.html
).
This study explores the information environment of the collaboratory from each of these
perspectives, in linear sequence. In Phase One, an objective reality of the collaboratory
is constructed using quantitative taxono-bibliometric analysis of collaboratory-specific
publications (n=86) that are made available through the world's libraries, and synoptic
content analysis of the subset (n=22) Theory-Type Research publications. Phase One
determines that the collaboratory literature reflects a relatively equal contribution from
the hard and soft sciences, and that theoretically, the collaboratory, as an environment,
is inherently interdisciplinary and ungendered.
Phase Two constructs a subjective reality of the collaboratory based on prolonged
immersion in the online environment. Phase Two determines that the collaboratory is an
instrumentally-determined social environment comprising unique and individual
configurations that variously combine modes of communication and media, and generate
unique combinations of data stores.
Phase Three constructs an intersubjective reality of the collaboratory via a Delphi
among collaboratory pioneers. Phase Three identifies the "rules of the road" for
the collaboratory and the skills Collaboratory Pioneers value in prospective participants.
It finds intersubjective cognitive dissonance with Phase One's objective, theoretical
findings of relative equality of contribution, and ungenderedness, and determines that in
the collaboratory, size matters, exploring groups size is a determinant in the subtle yet
distinct differences in preference for mix of informal and formal communication modes, and
flexible and rigid experiment planning.
Traditionally, the objective, subjective, and intersubjective routes to knowledge
construction are linear and sequential. The traditional academic route is from literature
analysis, to laboratory experience, to interaction with peer groups though conferences and
the peer review publication process. Implicit in the assumption that the collaboratory
will fundamentally change the way science is done is the notion that the objective,
subjective, and intersubjective will somehow fuse online, ideally resulting in new ways of
knowing, and more pragmatically in a quickening in time of the thought-to-finish process.
McLuhan observed that, at first, new technologies are always used to do old tasks until
some driving force causes those technologies to be used in new ways. This study finds the
collaboratory at the juncture of old tasks and driving forces.
Phase One's analysis of the library holdings reveals objectively that the
collaboratory, as measured by collaboratory-specific publications generally and by
Theory-Type Research publications specifically, has been built, at least theoretically and
conceptually, from a relatively equal contribution from the hard and soft sciences.
However, Phase Three's Delphi among collaboratory pioneers reveals a near unanimous
perception that the opposite is true. This gap in understanding, or cognitive dissonance,
can be variously attributed. First, the dissonance can be attributed to the use of and
possible misinterpretation of the word "built" in this research. Second, the
comprehensive identification and collection of the collaboratory literature as described
in Phase One reflects the libraries' general failure to provide or facilitate adequate and
easy access to the emerging body of knowledge, either because of shortcoming in existing
cataloging, classification, and indexing and abstracting schemes that perpetuate
disciplinary separation and lack of consilience, or its failure to develop access tools
that overcome the disciplinary focus and isolating tendency of periodical publishers and
database services.
The subjective reality created in Phase Two reveals no direct or continuing involvement
by librarians and information professionals in the design and configuration of
collaboratory interfaces and information resources, and a remarkable lack of standard
electronic librarianship. Collaboratories have been built, that is, physically
constructed, by collaboratory scientists, that is, scientists with a primary discipline
like materials science, physics, or molecular biology, who have been motivated by need or
interest to take their science online. The CIRAL criteria for inclusion as a
functioning collaboratory developed in Chapter Six includes digital library resources and
services. While each of the collaboratories explored in Chapters Seven and Eight provide
links to external information resources, not one includes the services of a librarian, nor
do the resources appear to have been developed by human information needs-centered
professionals.
Despite the collaboratory's promise of new ways of doing science, Phase Two of this
study finds that collaboratory work reflects the traditional ways of doing science, but
that it is done with the new medium of computerized networks. Like the laboratory, the
collaboratory is a "place to go" to do aspects of traditional science, namely
experiments, but is not yet a holistic, integrated virtual information environment capable
of supporting new ways of doing science. Scientists must still "go" elsewhere
(even if electronically) to conduct literature searches, they must still relate their
experiment and results to a disconnected and scattered body of knowledge, and they must
still write and publish their findings elsewhere, they must still manually search and
retrieve relevant and pertinent information to support their work, for themselves. Beyond
overcoming the problem of space, that is, the necessity to be physically present at an
instrument in order to participant in an experiment, the unique capabilities of the
computer have not been exploited to maximize the information efficiency of the
collaboratory. The processes of constructing a consilient objective, subjective, and
intersubjective knowledge environment are in their very elementary stages. The potential
information flows to support collaboratory work have not been automated to the
collaboratory interface, and the extensive data stores generated by collaboratory activity
have not been made accessible for expansive research.
Research Needs
The collaboratory was formally visioned by William Wulf in 1988 and first fully
implemented in 1997. The environment is young. Collaboratory Science is now widening its
focus from technological implementation to include cultural and psychosocial aspects of
collaboratory work. The opportunity to address the information needs identified by this
research is at hand.
This study identifies several areas of needed research:
- The preliminary findings of this study need to be confirmed with more experts and in
different collaboratories.
- Evaluation and analysis of existing collaboratory data stores with an eye toward:
- exploiting those stores to provide automated, intelligent information flow to the
collaboratory interface, and
- consilient, expansive studies of collaboratory work practices.
- mapping and modeling the actual work practices and information needs of collaboratory
participants as they relate to trust building according to collaboratory size toward
- informing the design of collaboratory interfaces, and
- developing a Delphi-based Collaboratory Expert System.
3. Evaluation and analysis of extra-collaboratory information practices of
collaboratory scientists as they relate to the library toward
- developing a collaboratory science library, and within it,
- discipline-, instrument-, and experiment-specific information resources pertinent to
practicing collaboratory scientists, and
- exploring the usefulness of the discipline x focus, article type, and topic x approach
taxonomies developed in Phase One as the foundation of an interdisciplinary classification
scheme on which to build a virtual interface to the collaboratory literature.
These specific areas of research can be tackled from a variety of perspectives, both
on-site and virtually. The perspective and question raised by Wulf (1988) and reflected in
the National Science Foundation's current Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence (KDI)
research agenda, "Why do scientists collaborate online?" will provide
knowledge about motivation and insights into new tools that might be developed. The
perspective "How do scientists collaborate online?" will provide
knowledge about existing practices and how the current generation of tools might be
improved. Each perspective generates a unique set of research questions, all of which can
be tackled with both quantitative and qualitative information studies techniques. The
purpose of this study is to create a foundation on which such expansive research might
rest.
As the collaboratory continues its evolution from old science with new tools, to new
science, and as the collaboratory becomes more widely available, careful attention to the
emergence of new rules and the need for new skills is necessary. An expansion of this
study's Delphi to a larger population will allow the rules and skills identified to be
more widely extrapolated, will allow keener investigation of the size issue, and inform
the development of Collaboratory Expert Systems. However, rules and skills are reflections
of a culture in time, and care must be taken that the rules of one group are not imposed
by perceived authority on subsequent groups.
The collaboratory is a new culture, inhabited by new class of scientist, the
Collaboratory Scientist, who brings disciplinary expertise to the virtual environment.
This study finds the cultural and organizational rules of Collaboratory Science
remarkably, if not dramatically, different than those of traditional science, and supports
Wulf (1988), and Lederberg and Uncapher's (1989) assumption that the collaboratory will
bring fundamental changes to the way science is done. Certainly, the change is
technologically-enabled, in that what was once done in person is now done via computer
networks, but there is also theoretical evidence that the change is sociocultural and
might be linked to the ungenderedness of the environment and the need to incorporate
traditionally female behaviors. But, while this study finds no evidence of gender bias in
either behavior or presentation of the online collaboratory, it also finds no compelling
evidence that collaboratory participants agree. Of course, this could be because they are
part of the system, a position that keeps them from seeing the system in its entirety
(Bertallanfy 1968).
The collaboratory is a purposively designed and executed virtual scientific information
environment executed from within the traditionally male-dominated environments of science
and technology. It is remarkable, and to the credit of those scientists and technologists,
that theoretically the collaboratory, by design, requires collaboratory scientists to
practice traditionally female behaviors such as cooperation rather than competition, and
group rather than individual work.
As a new and yet largely unpopulated environment the collaboratory is now available for
use by scientists, technologists, and educators worldwide. Armed with the "rules of
the road" and knowledge of the skills valued in prospective participants, educators,
librarians, and other information professionals are positioned to assist and facilitate
the transition toward and evolution of this newly constructed information and knowledge
environment.
As the driving forces that lead to the new science of the collaboratory emerge, library
information science has new opportunities to be of service. With its unique and
specialized knowledge of the delicate nuances and proclivities of human
information-seeking behaviors, and its special ability to recognize and mediate
information needs, library information science is uniquely positioned to inform
development of new tools and interfaces, and faces a grand challenge in organizing digital
library and information resources and service in support of Collaboratory Science. The day
of the Collaboratory Librarian has arrived.
