next step publishing

(For those not yet inscribed) there is a very interesting discussion taking place at
the yasmin list on "Next Step Publishing".
Here's the introductory statement by moderator Salvatore Iaconesi:

"In 2003 Antoni Abad and Eugenio Tisselli, artists and educators, created
"Zexe" (later called "Megafone"). In the project members of fringe
communities in Algeria, Spain, Mexico, Colombia and Brazil were invited to
"express their experiences and opinions through face-to-face meetings and
mobile phones". http://megafone.net/


Mobile phones, GPS technologies and convergent media were used to go beyond
classical anthropological writing, to create a disarticulated, ever-evolving
book that was disseminated in space, time and media, and that was designed
ethnographically, with the whole technological ecosystem that was gently
layered onto the social anthropological systems formed by the invited
communities.
What came out was a beautiful, disseminated, emergent,
multi-author, ubiquitous, open-ended narrative that represents a new form of
publication that has incredible value.

This example (among the other possible ones) shows a scenario which is
progressively rising in significance and effectiveness.

Naturally interconnecting arts, sciences, design, architecture, engineering,
and living across local and global scales, this scenario shows how we can
proficiently envision publications under the forms of social networks,
architectures, geographical spaces, economic systems, environments,
processes and design objects by creating "books" that are natively
cross-medial and that use technologies such as augmented reality, wide
tagging, spime, sensors, networks, mobile devices, wearable technologies.

Future scenarios, both near and far, raise interesting questions.

Can bodies, architectures, geographies, relationships, emotions, cities,
information, research processes represent proper spaces for new kinds of
publications?

Questions like these highlight fascinating, uncertain areas and a discussion
stemming from the list can contribute to shape the future research agenda.


In this discussion, titled "Next Step Publishing", we wish to investigate
these new forms of publication, and the transformations which they imply,
including:
* the mutation of the roles of publishers, editors, researchers, authors,
readers and the general society;
* the mutation of cities, of social ecosystems and of the networks of
knowledge and relation;
* the creation of suitable research, production and distribution models;
* and the use of means of presenting information that are accessible at
cognitive, anthropological and technical levels, using infoaesthetic
representations, knowledge and content sharing infrastructures, natural
interfaces and innovative forms of interaction."

I ve been following the discussion and wanted to point out a link
that was posted today. It is an article by John Wilbanks of the creative
commons, discussing how the internet is transforming scientific publishing and
science itself.