George Goodall, "Masons, Polynesians, and Bloggers: Applying Social Organization to Bibliographic Objectives"
[T]he production of meaning created by blogs is similar to how cathedrals were produced during the medieaval era. I see some disbelieving faces but I’m going to ask you to consider how cathedrals were actually built. Masons used no formal drawings, they had no formal training, and engineering rigour didn’t exist. It’s hard for many of us to understand how a structure like Aachen Cathedral could emerge without any documentation. So how did these incredible structures emerge?
The sociologist and historian of science and technology David Turnbull has studied the practices of the mediaeval masons and maintains that documents weren’t necessary for the construction of these magnificent edifices. There is prima facie support for this statement given that so many cathedrals remain standing and they were all built in an era when documentary practices were necessarily primitive given the lack of things like literacy, numeracy, and—frankly—paper for cheaply producing drawings.
Instead, Turbull (2000) maintains that what was required for building these cathedrals was a means of transmitting knowledge. Given the lack of what we would now recognize as formal communication mechanisms, the mediaeval masons relied on different processes. According to Turnbull, they used: talk, tradition, and templates. Basically, “talk” describes the process of talking through problems, “tradition” encompasses the intensive apprenticeship required by master masons, and “templates” refers to various geometric devices that enabled the masons to design and build without detailed knowledge of engineering principles. Templates served as a way of incorporating or “black boxing” the tacit skills of earlier generations of masons.
Technorati Tags: blogging, collective intelligence, emergence, folksonomy
Recent Comments