This document discusses challenges and opportunities of open scholarship in today's networked culture. It notes that while openness enables greater human connection and contribution, the public nature of online spaces can lead to risks like harassment, commercial exploitation of data, and the weaponization of information. However, the document argues that open scholarship remains important for building an informed society and democratic participation, and that scholars should work to shape practices of openness in a way that addresses modern challenges. Overall, the document weighs both benefits and risks of open scholarship online.

2. https://www.flickr.com/photos/99329675@N02/9441219583

3. How are we gonna shape our OWN
scholarly practice to be more open?

5. My open
scholarship
(YMMV)

6. Common theme?

7. Open as
about MORE than content…

8. …open as about CONNECTION.
HUMAN-to-HUMAN

9. In institutional
cultures, an
individual has a role.
In an open,
networked culture,
an individual has an
identity, which it is
their job to
differentiate.

10. …anybody ever write
on a bathroom wall?

11. The web gave us the world’s
largest imaginable bathroom wall.
YAY open scholarship!
(welcome to my, uh, office)

12. Networks
participatory networks = structure of the web

13. …what if you could engage with
leaders in your field every day?

14. (blog posts,
status updates,
half-baked
ideas,
papers, data,
vulnerabilities,
successes…)
Open = a practice of sharing

15. (share the failures too)

16. Contribution + Connection
“Sometimes…I’ll choose
someone with 20 followers,
because I come across
something they’ve
managed to say in
140 characters, and I think
“oh, look at you, crafting
on a grain of rice.”
- @KateMfD
https://www.flickr.com/photos/visualpanic/843670538

18. So…cheers?

19. BUT.
Open scholarship raises…
challenges.

20. …and more challenges.

21. and other risks.
https://mobile.twitter.com/cartoon_neuron/status/618385493227642880

22. The public toilet metaphor = apt?

23. here’s what happened.

24. Web 2.0
peak participatory web

25. But the social contract has no teeth.

26. then in quick succession…
the monetization era

27. the Attention Economy era

28. The extraction era

29. …and the weaponization era.

30. “You’re doing it wrong”

31. “The more dangerous social-web-fueled
gamification of trolling is the unofficial
troll/hate leader-board. The attacks on
you are often less about scoring points
against you than that they’re trying to
out-do one another. They’re trying to
out-troll, out-hate, out-awful
the other trolls.”
- Sierra (2014)
“You do not deserve attention”

32. “You do not deserve to live”
- Solon (2014)

36. So. It’s ALL
a toilet.
Should we just
retreat to our
ivory towers?

38. NOT because we’re wrong to
maybe want to…
“The Luddites are merely a placeholder for an idea: that
opponents of technological “progress” are ridiculous,
misguided, and doomed. Never mind that the Luddites were not
opposed to new technology, only to the disempowering and
inequitable deployment of new technology.” – Sacasas (2017)

39. https://www.flickr.com/photos/joybot/18968867088
But many of us can’t get IN to the
tower anymore. Or never could.

40. And knowledge is no longer confined
there by material scarcity..

42. So. When THEY mine data &
undermine democracy…
WE build open connections in a
weaponized culture?

43. YIP.

45. None of the web’s challenges are new.
Not the spectacle.
Not the sexism.
Not the racism.
Not the polarization.
We the citizens have made this place.

46. To build a society literate in its
own participatory structures &
surveillance tools, we need
open, public, visible scholars.

50. Public spaces –
open to all – can
serve needs that no
other structures in
society can.

51. THANK YOU.
@bonstewart