Scholarly skywriting is a term coined by cognitive scientist

Cognitive science

Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary scientific study of mind and its processes. It examines what cognition is, what it does and how it works. It includes research on how information is processed , represented, and transformed in behaviour, nervous system or machine...

 Stevan Harnad

Stevan Harnad

Stevan Harnad is a cognitive scientist.- Career :Harnad was born in Budapest, Hungary. He did his undergraduate work at McGill University and his graduate work at Princeton University's Department of Psychology...

 describing the combination of multiple email

Email

Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...

 and a topic threaded web archive such as a newsgroup

Newsgroup

A usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for messages posted from many users in different locations. The term may be confusing to some, because it is usually a discussion group. Newsgroups are technically distinct from, but functionally similar to, discussion forums on...

, electronic mailing list

Electronic mailing list

An electronic mailing list is a special usage of email that allows for widespread distribution of information to many Internet users. It is similar to a traditional mailing list — a list of names and addresses — as might be kept by an organization for sending publications to...

, hypermail

Hypermail

Hypermail is a free program for creating email archives, in the form of cross-referenced HTML documents. It takes a file in Unix mbox format and generates an HTML archive, complete with an index and various sorting options. It is commonly used for creating mailing list archives, but it can archive...

, netnews or Internet forum

Internet forum

An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are at least temporarily archived...

, linked and sortable by date, author, or subject-heading threads. The name derives from the idea that texts can be written in the "sky" (via multiple email and a web archive) for all to see ("skyreading") and all to add their own comments to ("skywriting").

After the property of being online and read/writable by all, the most important property of Scholarly Skywriting is "quote/commentary

Quote/commentary

Quote/commentary is a form of interaction in email and other modes of online communication consisting of cut and pasted passages of text followed by commentary focussed specifically on the excerpted passage...

": cut and pasting the target passages of a text followed by a commentary focussed specifically on the excerpt. The quote/commentary can be multiply embedded, providing a new dimension to hyperlink

Hyperlink

In computing, a hyperlink is a reference to data that the reader can directly follow, or that is followed automatically. A hyperlink points to a whole document or to a specific element within a document. Hypertext is text with hyperlinks...

ing.

Harnad suggests that scholarly skywriting with quote/commentary has revived the oral tradition

Oral tradition

Oral tradition and oral lore is cultural material and traditions transmitted orally from one generation to another. The messages or testimony are verbally transmitted in speech or song and may take the form, for example, of folktales, sayings, ballads, songs, or chants...

 in the online age, making it possible to have a conversation-like dialogue with a text (even a text with a deceased author) that fully utilizes the interactive cognitive capacities of the brain that evolved with language. In his view, writing systems provided permanent records missing from oral exchanges at the price of slowing the cognitive interaction to a tempo that is out of phase with the potential speed and power of interdigitating thought to which the brain is specifically adapted. Harnad claims scholarly skywriting is significant because it combines the advantages of oral and written communication, restoring the synchronous

Synchronization

Synchronization is timekeeping which requires the coordination of events to operate a system in unison. The familiar conductor of an orchestra serves to keep the orchestra in time....

, bilateral and interactive

Interactivity

In the fields of information science, communication, and industrial design, there is debate over the meaning of interactivity. In the "contingency view" of interactivity, there are three levels:...

 nature of the oral tradition with the permanence of the written tradition.

Student skywriting

Student Skywriting

Student skywriting is scholarly skywriting done in a teaching/learning context. The idea is to deepen students' interaction with texts by not only having them read them and do essays on them, but also to do interactive quote/commentary on them...

is scholarly skywriting done in a teaching/learning context.

External links

• http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/skywriting.html
• Student Skywriting Archives.