Social Epistemology IRLS 617

Social Epistemology was a very interesting class to me because it was about the study of knowledge, or "how it is tha people know what they know". (Fallis, Syllabus)  What more relevant subject could an aspiring librian study?  I enjoyed the theoretical foundations behind epistemology.  I have always had an interest in philosophy and learning and how it is that the mind can hold so much that is beautiful, delicate and/or powerful.  When epistemology is applied to a social context, things become very interesting, because people influence each others thought processes, opinions and attitudes.  I was made aware of a lot of interesting possibilities within this course.  In fact, more has stayed with me from this course than probably any other.  The most influential reading for me in the course was Paul Thagard's "Internet Epistemology: Contributions of New Information Technologies to Scientific Research" (1997).  This article to Alvin Goldman's criteria for epistemology (reliability, power, fecundity, speed, and efficiency) and applied them to burgeoning Internet technologies, and as students we were able to do the same.  Although we had access to Goldman's original work, Thagard was very succint in his presentation, a quality I always admire. 

Using these criteria I studied and evaluated the Creative Commons,  not-for-profit organization whose purpose is to serve as a middle-ground between the world of copyright's "all rights-reserved" mentality and public domain's lack of restriction..  It is a part of the Open Content movement that allows creators of works to give particular rights to users of those works.  Under this system, the most generous licensing is "attribution only."  This concept demands only that credit be given to the original creator and/or publisher.  Creative Commons offers more restrictive options as well, such as non-commercial licenses, and can also require that those who use material under Creative Commons licensing share their work under the same license.  Another option for authors is that their work be cited fully and cannot be "incorporated into new, derivative works"  (Fryer 2006).

In the class, we were required to submit a group project, and I have never  had as much fun, and gained as much insight into knowledge and how people influence others' acquisition of it, than I did with this project.  We evaluated Digg.com based on Goldman's criteria.  A new twist for me was using a blog to submit our work.  The blog can be found here: http://socialepistemology.blogspot.com/.  I find a still use Goldman's criteria to evaluate all kinds of Internet technology.  It has been an invaluable godsend.