Building Bridges: Toward Mutual Understanding Among Web-Related Professions

Author: John Garrett
Graduation Year: 2001
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Date: 13 March 2006
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The advent of the Web brought together professions that were in upheaval, forcing them to find ways to work with each other to overcome their own hurdles and the hurdle of working together. History's partitioning of knowledge into disciplines planted the seeds of these schisms among professions. The 20th century's calls for the building of bridges between the divisions of knowledge inspired the Internet, which in turn created this medium that demands such bridges.

To build one such bridge, I identified the work of Clement Mok as a starting point from which I could create a tool to identify the values and characteristics of various professions involved in creating professional Web projects. Such a tool would serve as a response to Scott Kim's assertion that disciplines must understand each other's values, characteristics and cultures to work well together. Conducting a survey to test Mok's ideas, I discovered a homogeneous population, indicating a similarity of values among the professionals working on Web projects. Because of this homogeneity, I abandoned the concept of a tool, as there would be no great difference between the professions. Instead, I concentrated on the meaning behind the similarity of the professions. The homogeneity and the high number of subjects who indicated they work regularly in three or more of the professions surveyed suggests that the survey findings support Mok's concept of movement among the professions involved in new media toward a common ground where they all share similar values. However, further research is necessary to support such a claim.