Procedural Discourse Networks:Weblogs, Self-organizations and Successive Models for Academic Peer Review

Abstract

By now, its become somewhat pass� to comment that metaphors of old media shape—and often constrain—our conceptions of new media. Over 40 years ago, McLuhan first pointed out our natural tendency to attempt to understand new media through metaphors derived from older media: “these are difficult times because we are witnessing a clash of cataclysmic proportions between two great technologies. We approach the new with the psychological conditioning and sensory responses of the old. This clash naturally occurs in transitional periods” (McLuhan 1967: 91). In the intervening decades since McLuhan’s pronouncement, the development of digital media has served as a perfect case study. Our computer screens simulate the organization of the typical office, complete with desktops, file folders, mailboxes, and clipboards. “Scrollbars” virtually extend a window of text while paying homage to perhaps the oldest form of paper medium. The typical Word Wide Web browser changes the computer window, which has its own history in the genealogy of perspective art (Bolter and Grusin 1999: 79), into a “webpage”. Digital publications extend the metaphors of print technology with indices and tables of content, particular structures of organization developed for print materials. These print metaphors shape our conceptions of digital projects—leading to the creation of electronic books, electronic archives, and electronic journals complete with dated volumes and issues.