Ask HN: How to start a new academic discipline?

5 points by marikio 8 years ago | 5 comments

I've had a very specific role with multiple organizations over the past 10 years. There's no job title for what I do, but I'm in demand with everything from startups to international organizations.

There is absolutely no literature on this type of work, a bit of research on small parts of it, but no academic institutions that teach it as a curriculum. I kind of just picked up pieces as I went and made it into my own marketable discipline/set of expertise.

I think this role is key to our society and will become significantly more important in the next 10 years. It also has so much potential to push our understanding of people, technology, human rights, etc.

Aside from writing LaTeX articles and publishing in a couple journals that tangentially relate, what are other ways I can lay the foundation for something like this to be its own academic discipline?

Where do I start?

anigbrowl 8 years ago |

Well, what is it? If you have a a 10 year head start then publicizing what you actually do would seem to be the quickest approach.

estroz 8 years ago |

Traditionally, academic disciplines have stemmed from others via discovery and innovation. There is no difference in academic CS; industrial (software) engineering best-practices, ex. design patterns, are derived from research. I would suggest doing a more thorough search through industry-focused academic literature, and pattern match what you do against findings to find a best match. Additionally, you could pursue a masters/PhD in a lab that does work on that topic (assuming you find something). Alternatively, get sponsorship from a company with resources as was suggested already. Think Bell Labs.

Out of curiosity, what is the general (or specific, if you feel comfortable sharing) area of your expertise? I'm always interested in exciting tech niches.

marikio 8 years ago | |

Unfortunately, I've reached out to MIT, Yale, USC which seemed to have departments focused on parts of what I do, but they all basically said "awesome stuff, much needed, we don't have the funding to explore, but please keep in touch".

I play at the intersection of systems engineering and social movements.

pypypypypypy 8 years ago |

If I were sure there was no community around the idea at the current point in time I would probably seek to start building that community through different mediums. You could start a meetup that focussed on the discipline, start a blog or aggregate site that collected the available literature and published news in the space. From there if you were willing you could approach different educational institutes and try to build courses or programs around the space. These things combined with other would grow the space and potentially be recognized as a separate discipline.

adventureartist 8 years ago |

Find a corporate sponsor(s). It's about the money. Have them fund research through a contract including you, a university, and the corporation. With 10 million dollars, the university will create a position "Department Head of Cyborg Spaghetti". Boom. A field is born.