Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Perhaps I'm just old and cynical, Danny, but for me, writing textbooks was just a job that I got paid for. I had a contract to write a book, I wrote it, I got paid, I moved on and did something else (IT consultancy, to be specific). I don't have any romantic notions about writing being different - it's just a way to make a living.
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I'm not arguing about writing being romantic or different than other pursuits, and though
(romantically) I do feel that education and proliferation of knowledge ought to exist outside of a capitalistic framework, it's not pertinent to the argument I'm trying to present. Just the opposite: knowledge generation is moving away from individual authorship to community authorship. Textbook authorship in the way that you used it to make a living is on its way out, as Baraniuk and others in the open education field have demonstrated very clearly. It's not going to be a way to make a living much longer, and I think romance lies in insisting that it is---romance, and the much more dangerous conservatism of insisting that alternate publishing models are immoral. I appreciate that this is not exclusively (or mostly) the tack that you've been taking, but an unawareness of where things are moving when defending an earlier ideal of publishing puts you in a position to unreasonably curtail knowledge access and (in accordance with community-based authorship and education) democracy.
Edit: Harry, I am
NOT NOT NOT suggesting that you are intentionally opposed to democracy. I'm suggesting that this could be an unintentional result of your position.