Free Knowledge and the ‘Art of Ethical Maintenance’: Risks and Challenges to Interpreter Education

Abstract

In Interpreting Studies, our collective intelligence has been transformed by tools and values borrowed from cyberculture and used by professionals and teachers alike. Pierre Lévy’s (1997) notion that the prosperity of a country, corporation or person depends upon their ability to optimally manage knowledge has also become a dominant paradigm in the anthropological space shared by scholars. In record time, we have progressed from the motorcycle to the spaceship. ‘Collaborative work’ in the cloud has become commonplace among students and lecturers. In Interpreting Studies and Education, the use of free and/or open courseware has allowed for our collective IQ to evolve and our shared noosphere to expand dramatically in recent years, but not without consequences. The arrival of collective tools, methodologies and frameworks entails novel epistemological risks that may challenge scholars’ hitherto common practices. This paper will explore these risks and consequences from the viewpoint of the ethical issues that arise when implementing values such as those of the Open Learning Model (Himanen et al., 2001) in day-today interpreter education. The construction of ethical values as collective knowledge in a class, a university department or School is an exercise in critical thought per se. It entails a reflective, self-critical effort on the part of the actors involved in order to keep ahead of the times, not just technically but, most importantly, with regard to meta-ethics, an exercise essential to what one could call the ‘art of ethical maintenance’.