Interdisciplinarity OR Information Addicts

Today we have been going through the topic of interdisciplinarity that lecturer ML thinks it will help us developing the metamorphosis project. Some words like "disciplines", "autonomy", "modernist" and "postmodernist" keep appearing and mess around my head. At the end of the lecture I think it is only tip of an iceberg and there are much more to explore, but I already had my mind blown!

Wanting to study a digital version of fine art, I am more leaning towards the cheering side of interdisciplinarity. And the free flow of information enabled us to acquire knowledge from other disciplines, why not taking advantage of it? An example that I imagined is like Vincent Van Gogh. What if he do what artists do nowadays: having personal websites, managing social networking sites like Facebook Fan page and in his case, reading self-help books and go to support groups. Maybe he won't die young and create more masterpieces?

Or maybe Vincent won't become THE Van Gogh anymore, he might be busy socialising that he didn't go to middle of nowhere and paint The Sower or The Potato Eaters or many more, without the sufferings he might just become one of the many good painters. Here come to the down side of interdisciplinarity: one may master nothing.

We are not all Leonardo Da Vinci who slept less to gain more time and mastering fifteen disciplines. To be honest, the idea of "everything connects to everything else" is very intriguing and I can almost imagine how satisfying it would be to know everything. But that is just before reading the down side of interdisciplinarity. These three words, "master of none", just gave me a big punch in the head. It's red, it's big and noisy. I now see it as "wakeup you idiot". I remember every time doing my research, I was clicking link by link, going through website by website and there is no end of that process. Often I forgot what I was researching at first and all those information read was a mess.

There must be a right way being interdisciplinarity and it differs with everyone. In my case, I think I've gone a wrong way and become a information addict. LOL.