Many will have seen this piece in the new *Chronicle of
Higher
Education*:
Book 2.0
Scholars turn monographs into digital conversations
By JEFFREY R. YOUNG
New York
While most scholarly books are reviewed by a few carefully
chosen
experts before publication, McKenzie Wark's latest
monograph is
getting line-by-line critiques from hundreds of strangers in
cyberspace, many of whom know absolutely nothing about his
academic field.
Mr. Wark, a professor of media and cultural studies at New
School
University, has put the draft of his latest book online in
an
experimental format inspired by academic blogs and the
free-for-all spirit of Wikipedia, the popular online
encyclopedia
that anyone can edit. Each paragraph of Mr. Wark's book has
its
own Web page, and next to each of those paragraphs is a box
where
anyone can comment - though readers are not permitted to
alter
the original text.
The scholar says he looks forward to sitting down each day
to
read a new batch of comments, some by colleagues whose names
he
recognizes and others by people cloaked by pseudonyms.
== snip ==
Copyright 2006 Chronicle of Higher Education
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