re [DEOS-L] Blogs, discussions, et. al

From: "Brad Jensen" <[log in to unmask]>

> Brad,
> 
> Do I detect some cynicism? :-)
> 
If you did the moderator must have inserted it because it left here as pure
irony.

> As mentioned in the posting, anecdotal information abounds in the popular
> press and this is a new research area. It might come across as being funny to
> you but publishing research on this emerging electronic phenomenon in
> paper-based journals is still de rigueur in academe. This practice will
> probably be with us for some time to come into the future until such time
> academic journals are produced in an electronic format as opposed to
> paper-based.

Yes, the web has been rip-roaring along for about ten years, and research
about the Internet is still published with quill and parchment by flickering
candle light.

Why even call it 'publishing' if the research is basically private? With the
Mickey Mouse (I mean that literally since it was written for Disney)
copyright laws, the information won't be freely available until years after
you are dead.

It's obviously immoral and antisocial to publish scientific information in
such an artificially restricted way, when better methods are widely known
and freely available.

Why do the people of the academic and research communities put

up with this? Do you have no sense of outrage, or are you just

weenies? Or maybe the purpose of publishing the research is to

get degrees, items for your C.V.s, and five copies for your Mother.

If it is supposed to be useful and encourage professional discourse and
further research, why isn't it in the most useful (and cheapest) form?

> The articles can all be located in an electronic format using
> subscription-based electronic article repositories such as EBSCO and Education
> Full-Text.
> 
"Those who do not trust enough will not be trusted."

Public digital information is alive and will contribute strongly to the
directions we go in the future. Private research is dead and paper-based
information is basically irrelevant. In a few years that paper will be
ignored.

Perhaps researchers feel they have no choice but to use the traditional
publishing methods. It can't be that they disrespect their audience and
peers.

How can anyone be expected to take paper-based discussion of digital
technology seriously?

> I have been blogging for the last couple years. As you are aware, the person
> who creates a blog can control who is able
> 
> to access and read the entries. Mine is private whereas yours is public.
> 
That sounds like keeping a journal in invisible ink. Not that There's
anything wrong with that. I don't blog very much. Most

of my public writing effort goes into listservs. Part of the reason for that
is habit, I was posting on Fidnoet before I ever got to the Internet.
Another part is that I like the interaction of email and particularly the
interspersed commentary format, which I don't see on blogs.

Blogs are more like broadcasting, and email is more like conversation.

> As a researcher, I also spend more time reading other people's blogs than
> blogging per se. Go figure, eh?
> 
I don't really read blogs very much, except lucianne.com (which is more like
a posting site than a blog) and Stephen Downes, which is delivered by email
and again is not so blabby.

I posted my dinosaur and social security essays in my blog just to give them
some permanent existence. The blogging software its on sucks horribly. You
have to read and study to be able to do things, then you have to remember
how to do them. (I know, whine whine whine.)

What I would really like to do is duplicate my listserv postings to my blog,
but of course they aren't much use without the comments I am commenting on,
and there are copyright issues there.

I've been thinking of writing some blogging software that would act more
like a listserv (allowing interspersed comments and allowing event-driven
subscription.) It would need some collaboration features also.

RSS doesn't do much for me, I've never used an aggregator. It seems like a
royal pain, and limiting. RSS would make a lot more sense if it were
delivered by email - not to your regular email account, but to an email
account that is read by your aggregator program.

> Gail
> 
>