Things that were formerly represented as the external raw materials of knowledge can now be represented and incorporated within the knowledge. And in contrast to linear, lock–step modes of dissemination of knowledge, we can see signs of possibility for scholarly knowledge in the more collaborative, dialogical and recursive forms of knowledge making already to be found in less formal digital media spaces such as wikis, blogs and other readily accessible Web site content self–management systems. Most journals are still making PDFs, still bound to the world of print-look–alike knowledge representation, but a reading of technological affordances tells us that we don’t have replicate traditional processes of knowledge representation — digital technologies allow us to do more than that.
Scientific discourse is evolving and multiple, emerging in relation to the specialties, projects, methods, problems, social configurations, individual positionings and other dynamics that drive scientific activities. Further, as science studies have indicated, even all the sciences together form no essentially marked and bounded domain, although various enclosures (such as societies or journal readership or university departments) may partially direct the circulation of communication. These problems of identifying crisply bounded discourse domains become even more difficult if we extend our survey to technology, which itself is not clearly bounded from the sciences. (p.16)
