Oh my. Dear Goodness. How can I go about pinning this to every academic funders door I come across in the dead of night?
Where do I start? In "The Idea of the Digital University: Ancient Traditions, Disruptive Technologies and the Battle for the Soul of Higher Education" by Frank Bryce McCluskey and Melanie Lynn Winter. This.
"In the renaissance much of the scientific advances did not take place in the universities, but outside them, often to the scorn of the universities and their faculty. Galileo, Leonardo da Vinci, Machiavelli, Descartes, Leibniz, Bacon, Locke Hume and Kepler were not part of the University culture but thrived outside of it."
In "Range by David Epstein he writes about a general difference between experts/ academics as Hedgehogs and innovators as Foxes. "Einstein was a Fox", he writes. Hedgehogs performed badly at predicting future events, he adds, but made great TV.
And how about this line in the film Mile 22 (2018) of the intel chief speaking to his team.
"Your job is not to predict tomorrow based on yesterday, that's what academics do you. Your job is to prevent the end of tomorrow by using your brains and imagination."
If you change Avi Loeb's "physics" for "journalism" plus ca change.
In 1995, thirty twenty-something year olds upended journalism in the UK by combining the role of editor, reporter and camera person. They were called Video journalists. Academia had no data on the new change so either ignored it, or rubbished it.
A decade later one of those twenty-somethings built a online platform to stream video, introducing a new aesthetic. Experts and academic largely ignored it. The US Knight Batten Awards said it heralded the future. (https://pressgazette.co.uk/archive-content/gyimahs-site-beats-us-rivals/)
A decade he uncovered groups of journalist combining cinema and journalism and creating compelling films. He was in academia by then. But any grants or reception from academic funders to who its use was short in coming. He did however get a PhD and Apple Inc thew its support behind it.
And then on, combining AI with interdisciplinary teaching he launched a startup course for Masters students, submitting grant proposals to investigate how AI could be made to unearth untold non-fiction stories. (http://www.videojournalism.co.uk/)
Academic funders sent the proposal back stating it was inadequate. Now that AIs all the rage, would they fund it now. Perhaps not! That person, ie me, has not the catalogue of research papers, and yes to cite Avi Loeb "Academic and federal funding systems do not encourage innovation enough.." in the UK, as well.
But I do recognise how invaluable the research process is within Universities.
A solution? To liaise with external agencies and people to produce works of impact. Turning around academia's supertanker model is all but impossible.
Or otherwise trust this new paradigm we're entering will bring together a new model of learning and commerce to solve problems.
“Come to the edge," he said.
"We can't, we're afraid!" they responded.
"Come to the edge," he said.
"We can't, We will fall!" they responded.
"Come to the edge," he said.
And so they came.
And he pushed them.
And they flew.”
― Guillaume Apollinaire
