On Hybrid Forums

I have been casted several times as an hybrid researcher; and not the kind of hybrid that emerges from research intersections, but rather hybrid from the conduct of my research. I am part of a bread of researcher who practice at the World Wide Lab, both crawling against and surfing on the top-down model of academia, beyond the greenways of its campuses. The type of researcher that traded away a desk with ethernet connexion on a campus for three affiliations and temporary officies. The enablers of this mutation are clear: a) my laboratory has extended its walls to the whole planet. b) instruments and data are “out there” for people without an academic affiliation to query and c) multiple channels of communication and debate such as this blog are now open. But what really gives me an edge over knowledge emerged from a confined center of “rational enlightenment” is the participation and contribution to hybrid forums (such as Lift) where I can mingle with an Adam Greenfield, a Julian Bleecker or a Daniel Kaplan or other members of bestiaries of researchers, designers, artists, thinkers, engineers. A great majority of them never or stopped following the scientific path and do not hang out in the academic world, but are nevertheless influential and how I frame my questions or interpret results.

Inspiration: the World Wide Lab by Bruno Latour

Relation to my thesis: The participation to a debate that goes beyond science and its representing nature (i.e. accuracy, precision, and reference) allows to test the motivations, rational, limitations, significance of my research work. This blog has been a fantastic tool to develop this face of the hybrid researcher; I plan to highlight it in my dissertation.

At Lift. “A crucial part of doing science is formulating the questions to be solved; it’s clear that scientists are no longer alone in this endeavor“. Latour