Conclusions: Perspectives for the social sciences

Based on our interim conclusions presented in other parts of this hypertext (with regard to the benefits and shortcomings and with regard to the factors influencing the development), we may draw the following preliminary conclusions with specific emphasis on the perspectives for the social sciences:

Writing and reading academic hypertexts is still in its infancy, in particular in the social sciences. The scenarios presented here do, however, explicitly include the social sciences. Many of the features as well as writing and reading habits of the present forms of Internet writing are heavily influenced by people with a technical or science background and therefore by people with less writing experience due to their training and day-to-day work. We may expect with Nickl 1996 that the Internet involvement of scholars from the humanities and social sciences with their focus on and enormous experience with written texts will make a huge difference. The first beginnings of the exploration of the scientific discourse relations (notably made by a group of physicists) will be expanded and may, eventually, lead to a social science model of knowledge representation in the digital age.

While it seems, at least for an outsider, that the sciences have developed a much more efficient way of taking stock of their results, the social sciences still lack a coherent structure (and culture) which would make it possible to speak of a slowly, but steadily growing body of (generalisable as opposed to quantitative-empirical) knowledge. One has the impression that Anschlußfähigkeit, i.e. the specific characteristic of academic research to be embedded in previous and later research (e.g. by using a common terminology), is often not the primary aim in the social sciences. Rather, one gets the impression, we work on separate construction sites, anxiously avoiding to get in too close a contact with other scholars and their building sites, i.e. definitions, models and theoretical endeavours. Most research in the social sciences is only poorly interconnected (except for a few, rather formal references to whole articles or books or even strands of thinking) – think, for instance, of all the individual case and area studies 'out there'! ...and here is a vision!

Maybe it is too idealistic and too much to be expected from technology anyway, but there is at least a slight chance that the shift from linear writing to the new paradigm of hypertext authoring may be used to make the social sciences less literature and more science. Hypertext authoring would force the academic writer to put his/her thoughts into a specific structure. This is a limitation and an opening up of new opportunities at the same time.

Paths: <BACK> <FORWARD> Front page <SHORT> Structure

Modules linking to here: Knowledge_Representation; Abstract; summary_of_factors; vision; sciences; Structure;