I just signed a petition calling for Norwegian universities to use research expertise on AI when deciding how to implement it, rather than having decisions be made mostly administratively. , If you are a researcher in Norway, please read it and sign it if you agree – and share with anyone else who might be interested. The petition was written by three researchers at UiT: Maria Danielsen (a philosopher who completed her PhD in 2025 on AI and ethics, including discussions of art and working life), Knut Ørke (Norwegian as a second language), and Holger Pötzsch (a professor of media studies with many years of research on digital media, video games, disruption, and working life, among other topics). This is not about preventing researchers from exploring AI methods in their research. It is about not uncritically accepting the hype that everyone must use AI everywhere without critical reflection. It is about not introducing Copilot as the default option in word processors, or training PhD candidates to believe they will fall behind if they do not use AI when writing articles, without proper academic discussion. Changes like these should be knowledge-based and discussed academically, not merely decided administratively, because they alter the epistemological foundations of research. Maria wrote to me a couple of months ago because she had read my opinion piece in Aftenposten in which I called for a strong brake on the use of language models in knowledge work. She was part of a committee tasked with developing UiT’s AI strategy and was concerned because there was so much hype and so few members of the committee with actual expertise in AI. I fully support the petition. There are probably some good uses for AI in research, but the uncritical, hype-driven insistence that we must simply adopt it everywhere is highly risky. There are many researchers in Norway with strong expertise in AI, language, ethics, working life, and culture. We must make use of this expertise. This is also partly about respect for research in the humanities, social sciences, psychology, and law. Introducing AI at universities and university colleges is not merely a technical issue, and perhaps not even primarily a technical one. It concerns much more: philosophy of science, methodological reflection, epistemology, writing, publishing, the working environment, and more. […]
Lilia
Jill, have no idea why there are no trackbacks, but I wrote something related to your presentation. It’s about distributed time and how it’s different for writers and readers.
And another thing: a paper on weblog conversations that I promised (comments are very welcome). Next to other things it’s about distributed authorship and how personal narratives and distributed narratives interact (which is a one of lines I’m working out for my PhD research).
Jill
Thanks Lilia – this is really interesting. If only I had more time; ugh, I hate how much there is to do this week.
As for the trackbacks, I don’t know what’s wrong. They weren’t working then I thought I’d fixed them but maybe they’ve gone wonky again for some reason. How annoying.
Lilia
Jill, this is not something that needs an immediate response 🙂 Also – we can always get to Skype or phone if/when you feel talking about it.
Francois Lachance
Jill,
Thanks for posting the pdf version of the paper.
Two initial questions:
First paragraph of the Intro — point about external links — you mean links outbound from the node and not external links inbound to the node. I wonder if this distinctions has an impact on your notion of self-contained.
Second paragraph — shift from notion of self-contained electronic literature (previous paragraph) to definition of distributed narratives as stories. I am wondering if the classic narratological distinction between narrative and narration might not be useful here. Is it the story that is distributed (or unconcluded) or the narration that is distributed (or ongoing)or both or either?
Paragraph three morphs the terms again! “distibutive narratives” = narratives with a tendency to distribute themselves, copies of themselves, parts of themselves, copies of parts of themselves…
I wonder if what you are after is not metadiscursivity.
See 5.11 from Sense: Storing and Sorting
Just as sets form sequences, cybernetic recoding generates the possibilities of metadiscourse. The theoretical space between recoding and metadiscursivity is occupied by narrativity or the potential conversion of sequence into story. In this space, verbal signs and their enunciation are on par with other types of signs and their presentation. The linguistic need not be privileged. Once tagging itself becomes taggable, the possibilities of metacommunication emerge.
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~lachance/S6B.HTM
Jill
Thanks, Fran?ßois – excellent points. I hadn’t noticed my own terms slipping like that. Distributive interests me especially. I don’t think that was deliberate. You’re right too, of course, about the use of “story”. I know I can’t use that unexaminedly, and I’m going to have to think carefully about why I do want to call it story.
Anyway, this is definitely an exploratory essay, where I’m trying to write to find where I’m going, so slippages like this are really interesting, and very useful to discover.
I’m not sure about metadiscursive, but thanks for the reference – I’ll have a look at it.