The Opportunities of Digital Dialogue

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Of note, we have found ways around all these problems, and more, on the Peaceful Science science forums.

  1. Dialogue is an ongoing conversation, instead of an event.

  2. The back and forth allows real questioning of assumptions, and definition of terms. The audience is huge, with some threads here already getting over 1000 views. However, the audience is also invisible and unseen, keeping the focus on legitimate exchange of ideas.

  3. This forum does not include avatars of disciplines, but several thoughtful scholars.

  4. Dialogue is public and in real time, but also can take place over days, with days between responses, allowing deeper reflection.

This is why I write:

One of the strange realities of the conversation between theology and science is that the most substantive dialogue takes place in digital spaces . Scholarly work often ends up entwined with public engagement. Key steps forward are often made in digital dialogue, immediately micropublished unofficially online. Forum threads, news letters, and blog posts can all become important artifacts in the ongoing conversation.Interesting ideas can hit the conversation immediately, without any filter. Peer review is real time, and part of the dialogue. It is through public comments on a blog post, for example, that new knowledge about population genetics was uncovered.

I’ve never been more hopeful for interdisciplinary dialogue than I am now. Technology is changing everything here. We’ve already see it this year, as major revisions to our understanding were established on forums before peer-reviewed papers or books. This need not be a fluke. There are structural reasons why a forum like this enables us to move past the pitfalls of other mediums.

Not only is it a place for innovative ideas to grow, it is also a place where we can be educated about other’s fields. @dga471, you are a physicist, but you are getting a deep exposure to several other disciplines, as legitimate experts tutor us. You won’t get a degree from this, but your competency and knowledge will grow.

Take seriously what happens here. This is the public square in a very real sense. It is very important what happens here. I think the exchanges we are seeing here are a new way forward.

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