Obscure thought for the day

“Disciplines are cultures, with embedded practices and ways of thinking that have been successful at tackling certain kinds of problems. When a new problem or opportunity arises that does not fall into one of the traditional disciplinary bins—like converging technologies–then practitioners from different fields may find they have fundamentally different perspectives on it, including whether there really is an opportunity. This kind of communications barrier depends, in part, on one’s level of inclusion in the disciplinary culture (Law & Bijker, 1992) and on which invisible colleges a particular member of the culture belongs to (Crane, 1972).” (From draft workshop proposal, Trading zones, interactional expertise and interdisciplinary collaboration, by Michael E. Gorman, University of Virginia)