Some Tips About Skywriting

From: Stevan Harnad (harnad@coglit.ecs.soton.ac.uk)
Date: Sat Nov 27 1999 - 15:14:56 GMT


Here are some suggestions that may help you feel comfortable about
Skywriting, and they will help us all get more out of it.

(1) Skywriting is not a test or examination. You are not writing to
prove that you have mastered something. You are writing because you have
found something of interest in the papers we are reading -- something
about which you have either question, an observation, an elaboration, or
a criticism -- and you are sharing it with the rest of it by writing it
in the sky for all of us to see, and to add to.

(2) Do not assume that those to whom you are addressing the topic have
read the paper, or know anything about its contents or its topic. Assume
only that they are very interested in it.

(3) Don't worry about making the English perfect: Just make sure what
you are saying is understandable to everyone else.

Skywriting is not just an academic exercise. I believe that it can lead
to a much deeper grasp of papers than merely reading them passively, or
listening to lectures about them -- or even writing essays about them.
Those are all non-interactive. Talking about the paper with others is
interactive, but it is too fast, it does not give you enough time to
think, and it leaves no record. Skywriting is optimal.

If you are interested in skywriting itself, as a form of communication,
in the context of the other forms of communication and their
evolutionary origins, see:

    Harnad, S. (1991) Post-Gutenberg Galaxy: The Fourth Revolution in
    the Means of Production of Knowledge. Public-Access Computer
    Systems Review 2 (1): 39 - 53 (also reprinted in PACS Annual Review
    Volume 2 1992; and in R. D. Mason (ed.) Computer Conferencing: The
    Last Word. Beach Holme Publishers, 1992; and in: M. Strangelove &
    D. Kovacs: Directory of Electronic Journals, Newsletters, and
    Academic Discussion Lists (A. Okerson, ed), 2nd edition.
    Washington, DC, Association of Research Libraries, Office of
    Scientific & Academic Publishing, 1992); and in Hungarian
    translation in REPLIKA 1994; and in Japanese in "Research and
    Development of Scholarly Information Dissemination Systems
    1994-1995.
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Papers/Harnad/harnad91.postgutenberg.html

Before and after skywriting. always check the archive:

http://cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/CogSci-Szeged99/

Csa, Istvan

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Stevan Harnad harnad@cogsci.soton.ac.uk
Professor of Cognitive Science harnad@princeton.edu
Department of Electronics and phone: +44 23-80 592-582
Computer Science fax: +44 23-80 592-865
University of Southampton http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/
Highfield, Southampton http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/
SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM



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