One of the important issues to be addressed in recent (AI driven) times is: how can research scholars acquire knowledge and simultaneously contribute to and communicate with society. Related to this question is: what is the role of scholarship in contemporary times?
Below are three thoughts that I wrote mainly with young researchers in mind. I am hoping that it may find use even among others.
1) Pursuit and utility of knowledge is the primary task of a scholar, and managing the perception of that knowledge is secondary. This means a scholar should use a majority of their time, resource and energy in enhancing the scholarly knowledge, and in cases where there is utility, applying that knowledge in the outside ‘noisy’ world. This is your personal knowledge based on your efforts and experiences, and cannot be replaced instantaneously. This also brings uniqueness. Once you have this, you can venture into creating a realistic perception about your knowledge. Remember that learning and researching, to a large extent, are under your control; whereas how the outside world perceives your knowledge is not. Therefore, it would be prudent to pay more attention to learning and doing rather than creating a perception. Note that I am not saying that perception is unimportant. All I am saying is that perception is secondary in importance.
2) One of the key learnings in research and education is that the world is always open to good knowledge and ideas, be it in academia or industry. People are always interested in interacting and hiring people with a sound knowledge base. It may take a while for somebody to discover your knowledge but if you have a strong foundation and then go out to the world and interact with it, it is very difficult for the world to ignore you. This means that having done good work, you should be able to share that work with the outside world. This can be a research paper or an engineering prototype or any form of science, art or talent that you have. The crucial point here is to first do the hard work and then venture into the sharing of that work.
3) In your work, do not compromise on rigor. If you are a researcher, your first commitment should be towards addressing your scholarly peers or specialized industry and then broadening your communication. Within scholarly communication, you will have to address questions within the research community. This means you will be basing your work on a large body of knowledge and subjecting yourself to internal and external criticism. This is where rigor comes handy. Here, rigor does not mean unclear communication. It means to have thought through the questions, nuances and complications of a problem and have a broad and balanced view of the research problem. General audience, sometime, perceive rigorous scholarly communication as filled with jargon and complications. Therefore, it is always better to create two versions of your work: one for your peers and one for general audience. In the age of AI, the second version is easier to create. Remember that your expertise will be vital in creating the second version for the general audience. That is where you can bring your authenticity and creativity. This can also broaden the scope of your knowledge without compromising your scholarship.
These are a few fleeting thoughts. You can criticize, edit, expand and adapt it to make your own version of it. After all, that is how knowledge moves forward 😊
VISMAYA - History & Philosophy of Physics 