On my last evening visiting Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), I had the chance to walk the campus.
As we passed the monument to Heinrich Hertz, I was struck by how easy it is to forget the contributions of seminal thinkers.
Academics do so for a variety of reasons.
We get busy with life.
We don’t think about adjacent fields.
We don’t read about the history of science.
We live in a world disrupted by change, making it hard to reflect on what was.
We are looking forward to the next project.
And yet.
All we do rests on the fundamental work of great people who made our academic world possible.
Absent Hertz, we would not have the Internet, television, and more.
We might have something else.
But we would not have the world as we know it.
It was a powerful reminder to be grateful for the many famous and not famous academics who constructed my discipline & the broader academy.
Some are no longer with us, some are retired, and some are still making vibrant contributions.
I paused to think about Gordon Davis, whose book on navigating the dissertation framed my early career, Bob Zmud, who refused to let me take a master’s course and advised me to take a doc seminar, and Vallabh Sambamurthy, who suggested that I might enjoy a career in information systems.
When I return home, I plan to share my stories about these scholars with my students, to remind them of where I came from and how they shaped their lives.
I plan to encourage my students to read up on giants from other fields who helped create the academic world we live in - like Hertz or Benz.
By doing so, I hope to remind them of the power of academe to shape the lives of individuals and or societies.
Absent reminders of our cumulative traditions, It’s easy to lose our way and lose track of the big picture - that we are all part of a more extensive community that creates, shapes, and shares knowledge- and that is transforming the world.
I am very grateful to Ali Sunyaev and his team for this reminder.
KIT has enriched my academic life - and helped my teen, who trailed along for the walk - better understand what her father does & why I do what I do - which often doesn’t look so exciting - helps lay bricks for the world she will help shape in the future.
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