*The Growth and Decay of Shared Knowledge * ** <http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/luncheon/2012/03/heffernan>http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/luncheon/2012/03/tenen * Dennis Tenen, fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society* Today, 6.30 pm Webcast live: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/interactive/webcast http://nexa.polito.it/berkman-webcast-live Knowledge grows, but it also contracts as outmoded facts and theories are replaced with new ones. This talk will discuss our intuitions about knowledge domains and the methods by which such intuitions could be modeled empirically. Along the way, Dennis will unpack the "information as organism" metaphor, construct taxonomies of epistemological lifeforms, and consider evolutionary pressures on knowledge systems. The talk will conclude with a conversation about the health of the academic publishing industry, and about the challenges of doing comparative work between new and old media. *About Dennis* Dennis Tenen is a literary scholar and a recovering software engineer. He is a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, working with metaLab and the Cooperation Group. His research concerns the poetics of human-computer interaction, the study of co-authorship and editorial practice, the formation of cultural capital, and experimental criticism. He is joining the faculty of the English Department at Columbia University as an Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities and New Media in the fall.