This article is concerned with developing a philosophical approach to a number of significant changes to academic publishing, and specifically the global journal knowledge system wrought by a range of new digital technologies that herald the third age of the journal as an electronic, interactive and mixed-media form of scientific communication. The paper emerges from an Editors' Collective, a small New Zealand-based organisation comprised of editors and reviewers of academic journals mostly in the fields of education and philosophy. The paper (...) is the result of a collective writing process. (shrink)

As the field of Science and Technology Studies has become more established, it has increasingly hidden its philosophical roots. While the trend is typical of disciplines striving for maturity, Steve Fuller, a leading figure in the field, argues that STS has much to lose if it abandons philosophy. In his characteristically provocative style, he offers the first sustained treatment of the philosophical foundations of STS and suggests fruitful avenues for further research. With stimulating discussions of the Science Wars, the Intelligent (...) Design Theory controversy, and theorists such as Donna Haraway and Bruno Latour, _Philosophy of Science and Technology_ _Studies_ is required reading for students and scholars in STS and the philosophy of science. (shrink)

Universities have flourished in the modern era as central public institutions and bases for critical thought. They are currently challenged by a variety of social forces and undergoing a deep transformation in both their internal structure and their relationship to the rest of society. Critical theorists need to assess this both in order to grasp adequately the social conditions of their own work and because the transformation of universities is central to a more general intensification of social inequality, privatization of (...) public institutions, and reorganization of the relation of access to knowledge. This is also a pivotal instance for asking basic questions about the senses in which the university is or may be ‘public’: (1) where does its money come from? (2) who governs? (3) who benefits? and (4) how is knowledge produced and circulated? (shrink)

As the field of Science and Technology Studies has become more established, it has increasingly hidden its philosophical roots. While the trend is typical of disciplines striving for maturity, Steve Fuller, a leading figure in the field, argues that STS has much to lose if it abandons philosophy. In his characteristically provocative style, he offers the first sustained treatment of the philosophical foundations of STS and suggests fruitful avenues for further research. With stimulating discussions of the Science Wars, the Intelligent (...) Design Theory controversy, and theorists such as Donna Haraway and Bruno Latour, _Philosophy of Science and Technology_ _Studies_ is required reading for students and scholars in STS and the philosophy of science. (shrink)

This article reviews claims for creativity in the economy and in education distinguishing two accounts: 'personal anarcho-aesthetics' and 'the design principle'. The first emerges in the psychological literature from sources in the Romantic Movement emphasizing the creative genius and the way in which creativity emerges from deep subconscious processes, involves the imagination, is anchored in the passions, cannot be directed and is beyond the rational control of the individual. This account has a close fit to business as a form of (...) 'brainstorming', 'mind-mapping' or 'strategic planning', and is closely associated with the figure of the risk-taking entrepreneur. By contrast, 'the design principle' is both relational and social and surfaces in related ideas of 'social capital', 'situated learning', and 'P2P' (peer-to-peer) accounts of commons-based peer production. It is seen to be a product of social and networked environments — rich semiotic and intelligent environments in which everything speaks. The article traces the genealogies of these two contrasting accounts of creativity and their significance for educational practice before showing how both notions are strongly connected in accounts of new forms of capitalism that require a rethinking of the notion of creativity and its place in schools and institutions of higher education. The article begins by providing a context in terms of a history of the knowledge economy and the historical tendency toward aesthetic or designer capitalism. (shrink)