Peer production and collective intelligence as the basis for the public digital university^*

* This paper expands on a keynote talk given by Michael Adrian Peters at The Creative University Conference, University of Aalborg, Denmark, 18–19 August 2016. The last section of the paper, Towards the creative public digital university,  expands on the keynote talk given by Michael Adrian Peters at The Creative University Conference, University of Waikato, New Zealand, 15–26 August 2012.

Abstract

This paper reviews two main historical approaches to creativity: the Romanticist approach, based on the culture of the irrational, and the Enlightenment approach, based on the culture of the objective. It defends a paradigm of creativity as a sum of rich semiotic systems that form the basis of distributed knowledge and learning, reviews historical ideas of the university, and identifies two conflicting mainstream models in regards to understanding of the university as a public good: the ‘Public’ University circa 1960–1980, and the ‘post-historical’ university. Based on practical experiences, and on previous works by Peters and Jandrić, it develops the new model of ‘the creative university as digital public university’, and  argues that it provides a useful philosophical goal for directing present and future practices of the contemporary university.

Keywords:

• Creativity
• public good
• public university
• digital university
• creative university
• higher education
• Bildung
• democracy
• peer production
• collective intelligence
• open science
• open economy
• cultural infrastructure
• homo economicus
• homo collaborans

Notes

* This paper expands on a keynote talk given by Michael Adrian Peters at The Creative University Conference, University of Aalborg, Denmark, 18–19 August 2016. The last section of the paper, Towards the creative public digital university,  expands on the keynote talk given by Michael Adrian Peters at The Creative University Conference, University of Waikato, New Zealand, 15–26 August 2012.