Fluidity

Like so much work that is done on the Internet, joining the Kairos Editorial Board requires an appreciation for fluidity, which, considering the constant flux of the Internet, is no suprise. The journal is new and in many ways still trying to find its voice; publishing scholarly articles on the World Wide Web remains a project of exciting uncertainty. There will be times when you simply will not be sure of what to do.

We have, after all, few models for what we do. Since both Kairos and the WWW are but youths, editorial board members must maintain the ability to adjust quickly as new ideas and models emerge in concert with, and at times against the grain of, ever evolving WWW technologies.

But fluidity doesn't mean we want to be guided by hodge-podged, ad-hoc, unstructured-whatever-the-net-offers sensibilities--for that type of chaotic celebration, there's Rhetnet. We're fluid, as Joel English notes, because fluidity is part of life online:

I get the feeling that [web publishing] will always be fluid: I attribute the fluidity and easy-reviseableness of our process not to the newness of the forum, but to the very forum itself ... [i]n other words, I don't think we will or should lose the fluidity as we "get old."

In Funeral Oration , Isocrates kinda gets at a definition of "kairos" as he attributes the heroic dead as living by "the perfection of argument rather than the rigor of law;" and I get the feeling that's how we work things too--as appropriate ways of handling our issues occur (within certain parameters, perhaps) we adapt and proceed with what seems best rather than confining ourselves to rules or rigorous protocols. I doubt we will and hope we don't lose the ability to do this.