A few days ago I wrote an entry on the subject of thesis and working papers. I begun with a text written by Alejandro Piscitelli in the blog of the Catedra de Procesamiento de Datos from the Communication Sciences career at the University of Buenos Aires (in spanish), in which some strategies of how to put together a thesis were commented.

But not only Piscitelli’s text grabbed my attention. In the entry, there’s a large series of comments that, instead of analyzing the entry, they ask for help:

HI I’M FROM BOLIVIA, I HAVE TO ELABORATE A WORKING PAPER FOR LAW SCHOOL, ABOUT RESEARCH TECHNIQUES, I’D LIKE TO GET SOME HELP WITH THE TOPIC, BECAUSE THE TRUTH IS I DON’T KNOW WHAT SUBJECT TO TALK ABOUT, THANK YOU.
Published by: CLAUDIA, November 18, 2003 at 04:41 PM

As you can see, a comment like this makes very little sense in the web. In the first place, it’s almost impossible to have someone help you put together your thesis if you give such few precisions. At least, you have to define the object of study, hypothesis or questions that guide the research, etc. This can’t be done by anyone but the researcher/thesist. To make this work is a really long, complex process. It’s very unlikely that somebody else is going to do it for you.

But, in the second place, the most important matter is somewhere else. In the web, knowledge is built in a public and coolaborative manner. That is, with the active participation of a group of people that not only help themselves in a philantropic way, but also give each other a hand to accomplish common goals. To write a comment in a blog and sit around waiting for someone to send you an email with the requested help to build a thesis is something that just makes no sense within this model of knowledge construction. In the same way a blog gains interest when the blogger and his readers colaborate actively (something I talked about in a previous post on Vida Vacia 4.0) the creation of knowledge is not something made by an only person, but by a community.

For this reason, if you’re really interested in participating in active discussions concerning subjects of study, research and thesis objects, in the phorum or blog that you want, its very unlikely that someone will help you out if, on one hand, you don’t give accurate information about your project and, on the other hand, you don’t participate in this community colaborating with the rest in common goals.

But this active attitude, that rejects the usual forms of passive reception of knowledge, seems hard to assume by a significant number of net users. For example, in this entry of Nanotechnology, a relevant number of people, instead of commenting on the text, dedicate their time to leave texts like this one:

TRINO:
Please, I’d like to get the latest news on nanotecnology, the fields where it’s being currently applied to, and the way it can modify man’s life, its benefits as well as secondary effects to which we’re exposed.
thanks,
12/02/2004 16:01:08 email: ocampo_jt(arroba)hotmail.com

The topic reach such proportions that the author of Nanotechnology dedicated a post to the subject of in his other blog in spanish, Loogic, where he unloads his opinions on this ‘comfortable’ users. And very honestly, he states: “What do they think? that I’m gonna spend my whole day sending emails, dedicating to recopilate ALL of the information in the world about nanotechnology and send it URGENTLY TO THEIR EMAILS?”

I believe we have a long way to go in subject of educating net users, as teaching them how to use the net as a knowledge tool. It’s worthless to leave a comment in a blog begging for help; we have to assume the role of searching for the information, then publish it and encourage the rest of users to collaborate with our venture. It’s not a quick process, of course. If what we need is urgent information, then we better look it up on our own. But if what we’re looking for is to broader our work in a long term, sharing our knowledge with others can be a strategy to obtain more research resources.