Martin Paul Eve bio photo

Martin Paul Eve

Professor of Literature, Technology and Publishing at Birkbeck, University of London

Email Books Twitter Github Stackoverflow MLA CORE Institutional Repo Hypothes.is ORCID ID  ORCID iD Wikipedia Pictures for Re-Use

I’m at a workshop in Madrid organized by FORCE11. The first exercise was to imagine a world where universities did not exist, their hierarchies and power were abolished, but we still knew what we know. What would we build?

I answered through a series of “undoing” questions:

  • What is HE for?
  • Why do we research?
  • What is “knowledge”?
  • What financial form would have to underpin whatever we build? (this world isn’t that different it seems)
  • How do we remunerate labour?
  • Who gets to be “in” whatever we build?
  • Why humanities/sciences?
  • Why disciplines?
  • What is relationship between knowing things and governing/having power?
  • What kinds of freedom are needed to pursue knowledge?
  • How do we tell people what has been found locally?
  • How do they find it?
  • How do they use it and how much do we want to determine how it is used?
  • What labour forms are involved?
  • Do we want division of labour and specialisation? Even in communications?
  • Who might wish to harm us and how do we stop them?