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open source fact checking

It's late, and I have better thing to be doing, but I have to post a link to a silly blog entry about "the dearth of academic bloggers." The post doesn't really cite any evidence that academics blog at a lower rate than other professions, but it does cite a comment on another post with an interesting line of reasoning:

Why would academics not favor expanding that ecosystem? I think the answer relates to Tyler Cowen's often asked question about academics' tendency to belief in central economic planning. In both cases, there is a necessary and inherent belief in perfect, complete knowledge.

So academics are still fighting for a Soviet-style command economy, and therefore avoid grassroots media projects like blogs? Maybe in the sciences academics are still drawn to positivist notions like "perfect, complete knowledge," but hasn't this guy heard of what's popularly known as "postmodernism"?

I still don't buy the assertion that the academy is resistant to blogs. Juan Cole and Larry Lessig are high-profile academic bloggers, and there's even an upcoming conference on the academy and social software like blogs. If anything, it's a generation gap driving the lack of professors blogging. Off the top of my head, I can think of grad students in Anthropology, Information Studies, Rhetoric and Composition, and, um, Media Studies with relatively active blogs, so once we chase down that tenure-track job, perhaps the academy will be rife with blogging professors.

Posted by McChris at March 9, 2005 12:43 AM
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Comments

Hey Chris. You forgot to close an Italics tag in one of your entries, and now half of your blog is all slanty-like.

You're welcome.

Posted by: Baylor at March 9, 2005 02:42 PM

That is my comment above in blue. Your points are fair. Your point about a generational gap is right on (save Gary Becker). Yeah, I've heard of post-modernism; perhaps I was too hyperbolic. Nevertheless, there is a tendency in academics to take on HUGE topics and treat them comprehensively. Such is the privelege of tenure. Please accept that as my revised thesis.

Posted by: Eric Anderson at March 10, 2005 01:14 AM

Your blog has a cool title, by the way.

Posted by: Eric Anderson at March 10, 2005 01:15 AM

Below is the correction I posted to Smart Mobs:

"David Goldberg wrote the words in the above citation; he was paraphrasing and extending my comment. Nevertheless, thanks for the hat tip!

I originally argued that some would resist the blogosphere's opensource, micro-theorizing becasue the research model subverts the status quo academic research model--not power structure. Though 'bloggers as scholars' and 'bloggers as critics' are probably both correct.

In the academic model, a researcher carefully builds a macro-theory over a period of years in isolation. Blogs are too fast and too flexible. Undermining "authority" is a minor issue compared to the speed at which macro-theories can emerge from inteacting micro-theorists in the blogosphere. Furthermore, the emergent marco-theory (or 'meme complex') will tend to be more robust since its constituent parts--its micro-theories (or 'memes')- survived open source fitness testing and selection.

The trend to watch is authors writing books while keeping a blog. How do comments, links, and trackbacks shape the writing process? Test cases: Tom Barnett, Scoble, Chris Anderson, and...you?

Today, Bill Tozier also played with the ideas of speed and robustness. Note the allusions to fossils and relevance:

http://williamtozier.com/slurry/comment/academia/seventySomeWords.html