Academia

Social media and academia: notes from a lecture

Today I held a lecture (in Swedish) about the potential of social media for academic researchers. It had the silly subtitle: Can Facebook make you a better researcher?

To set the scene the lecture began with a quote from Plato’s Republic (1982, p116) by Peter Medawar on what a scientist is:

“Scientists are people of very dissimilar temperaments doing different things in very different ways. Among scientists are collectors, classifiers and compulsive tidiers-up; many are detectives by temperament and many are explorers; some are artists and others artisans. There are poet-scientists and philosopher-scientists and even a few mystics.”

The purpose of the quote was to set the groundwork and remind the audience (all scientists) that we are all different in our motivation, inclinations and methods and therefore we need to find a common ground to be able to discuss what it is that we do.

This common ground is the actual organization within which all these diverse individuals carry out their activities: The university. I showed a timeline with the establishment of the University of Bologna in 1088, University of Paris 1150, a charter of academic freedom (Constitutio Habita) in 1155, University of Cambridge (1209), University of Salamanca (1218), University of Uppsala (1477) and University of Lund (1666).

In addition to this I reminded the audience that the enlightenment project began in c:a 1650 and that the first purely scientific journal the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society commenced in 1665.

The point of all this was to set the stage for the fact that the topic of my talk was how a recent technology is affecting a well-established system. The Internet (ArpaNet) was connected in 1969 and the World Wide Web in 1991. The technological infrastructure of my talk is just ten years old.

So why should a system that has worked for 1000 years care about this new, new thing?

To answer this I pointed out that all systems have within them flaws. No matter how well a system works it carries within it the negatives as well as the positives. So in order to be an improvement the new systems must negate the flaws while maintaining the positives.

To exemplify inherent flaws I talked about affordances and showed an example of anti-homeless technology. Anti-homeless technology turns regulation of society into technology and removes the need for democratic process. I showed the flaws of printed works with the Wicked Bible of 1631 – where a small error in the printing changed one of the ten commandments into: Thou shalt commit adultery. And an example of the dangers of trusting authority by discussing the Sokal Affair. Here I used a quote from Alan Sokal’s discussion of what he had done in his infamous article “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity” (Social Text Spring/Summer 1996)

The fundamental silliness of my article lies… in the dubiousness of its central thesis and of the “reasoning” adduced to support it. Basically, I claim that quantum gravity… has profound political implications… Finally, I jump (again without argument) to the assertion that “postmodern science” has abolished the concept of objective reality. Nowhere in all of this is there anything resembling a logical sequence of thought; one finds only citations of authority, plays on words, strained analogies, and bald assertions. (Alan Sokal “A Physicist Experiments With Cultural Studies“ Lingua Franca 1996).

Following this I returned to the promises made by the enlightenment project: freedom from dogma, evidence based studies, individual before authority, science before belief, freedoms of expression and democracy etc.

The problem with many of these great promises is that they were not made available to a wider audience. In part this may be because the wider audience is not ready for the promises but also because the communications infrastructure was in the hands of a smaller group. The latter could be due to monopolies, political control or limited popular knowledge but still the general public was largely outside the creation and dissemination of knowledge.

Technology began to ease these limitations and create a possibility for larger groups to participate. Indeed through the last centuries work in digitalization and connectivity and the cheapening of a multitude of personal devices the whole game plan has changed radically. I like to argue that in relation to many of the enlightenment promises the theoretically possible becomes the inevitable – for good and for bad.

Scientists and universities are now living in a world where the larger audience has the ability to connect and comment so how does this make individuals into better researchers?

Well in the lecture I focus on two aspects: communication and networks.

The ability, created by technology, for the researcher to communicate via blogs provides a potential. While many see the “new” technology as a waste of time – and many universities see little or no value in blogs – at least I have yet to come across a university that rewards its researchers for blogging (even though some pay lip-service to the act).

Therefore it is up to the individual – from his/her own perspective to find a reason for finding the activity rewarding. In order to demonstrate this I provided my reasons why academics should blog:

Practice: No matter how much you write you can always practice. Now writing papers is practice but papers demand a more rigorous approach. Get it wrong and the work is wasted (almost). Rejection makes it difficult to feel that the writing has been worthwhile so the writer tries very hard to fit in to the form set by the community. Blogging on the other hand – can be – freer. It provides an interesting arena for experimentation with the lighter, wilder, weirder ideas that research generates. Naturally you will be argued against but it is doubtful you will be shot down in the same ways as you are in a paper.

Marketing: Lets face it, not many people really read papers. Many are virtually unread. Getting a paper published can do little more than another line to the CV. Hardly the kind of thing that builds your reputation. And another thing we must face, researchers live in several marketplaces. We like to think of ourselves as living in pure (ivory towers of) research but in reality we are always in need of funding, collaboration and access. We are selling ourselves – it may not be pretty but it is difficult to deny.

Shorts: Blogging is amazing for pushing out small ideas. The stuff that you think you may eventually write about – if you ever get the time – but probably never will. An insightful blogpost is more useful to you and to the world than the half written notes in a forgotten corner of your harddrive.

Explaining yourself: As a newbie PhD student one of my professors always said that I should be able to explain the relevance of my research within 60 seconds, or the amount of time it took for a short elevator ride. The point being that most people are not interested and to be able to explain the relevance of what you do is vital. Blogging can help you practice and hone these skills.

Feedback: Too much academic feedback is stuck in the formalia. Making the writing fit the journal or community requirements. When you blog the people who do comment or argue with you demand that you stick to the point rather than the format. It can be brutal but it’s always valuable.

Community: As a researcher you become a nerd. And not in the (now) popular way. You are dealing with some really obscure shit. Getting out there and talking increases the chances of other nerds finding you and accepting you. This is important because you can never have too many friends.

Competitive edge: Blogging alone will not make you into a successful academic. But it will provide you with a competitive edge. Your work will be more widely known. Maybe even more widely read. Whatever happens no researcher loses on not being heard of.

Serendipity: Researchers became researchers because they love research. Its not a highly social skill set. We tend to stick around in libraries, labs or departments. Seriously simply by being online we increase the chances of happy occurrences that may improve our contacts, lives and research. Sure this is a very optimistic worldview but hoping for serendipity sure beats the alternative.

Varfor bry sig om social media?

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GikII speakers & presentations

This year I am fortunate to be the local organizer for the wonderful GikII conference. This is GikII’s 6th year and its first time in Sweden so its time to be extra proud. In the call for papers we included:

For 2011, this ship full of seriously playful lawyers will enter for the first time the cold waters of the north (well, further north than Scotland) and enter that land of paradoxes: Sweden. Seen by outsiders as well-organised suicidal Bergman-watching conformists, but also the country that brought you Freedom of Information, ABBA, the Swedish chef, The Pirate Bay and (sort of…) Julian Assange. We offer fine weather, the summer solstice and a fair reception at the friendly harbour of Göteborg.

Now the conference is fast approaching and organization is steaming ahead. We have a schedule & information about the venue online. And check out these presentations!

This is going to be good! But then again, GikII always is.

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Post-Social Media

Yesterday I was in Borås at the Social Media Day which is an annual politics and social media conference (ppt slides and movies here). This year was opened by the US ambassador to Sweden Matthew Barzun, who gave an interesting talk (ppt) (much of it in Swedish, which was impressive). He spoke about the promise of technology and the difficulty of predicting the future and the importance of values in developing and using technology.

He also told the story of the Swedish engineer Laila Ohlgren, who, in the early days of mobile phones, solved an interesting issue of data roaming: by the time you finish dialing you have lost contact with the original phone mast. She proposed the simple – but breathtakingly fundamental – change of dialing the complete number first and then hitting the dial button. Fantastic, simple, basic… and totally revolutionary thinking.

Next up was Marie Grusell who spoke on the topic of party leaders use of twitter in their communication. She made interesting points on the differences between dialog and monologue and the relatively low usage of twitter among Swedish politicians. My focus on this was cultural and I wondered why the use was so low. An interesting comparison to the low numbers (the highest was Gudrun Schyman with 183 following and 9,447 followers) is the Norwegian Prime Minister @jensstoltenberg who follws 34,768 and is followed by 48,698.

This was followed by Per Schlingmann & Hampus Brynolf who held a low-tech (i.e. no ppt) discussion on social media now and in the future. There talk was experienced based and they seemed to be in relative agreement that social media would become a natural part of the political dialogue, that nobody wins elections through social media – but they may lose them through social media, that technology has led to the need for politics to be prepared with immediate answers for everything – which creates a need for an artificial, slowing down to think before you tweet. They also pointed to the unfortunate lack of focus on the everyday social media use in politics and the overemphasis on campaigning.

This was followed by Anders Kihl who demonstrated the ways in which Borås has been working to create multiple access points to municipal information and dialogues. As a practitioner Anders is very down to earth and the work done in Borås shows that everyday social media use in politics is important and engaging.

Jan Nolin introduced the concept of Wikipolitics into the discussion which had so far been very much focused on the concept of social media as a communications channel. He argued that social media channels does not take into consideration the importance of the possibility of using social media as political movements – not only in protests but provides a potential for the harnessing of the power of crowds in everyday socio-political life.

Next up was Grethe Lindhe from Malmö who presented the ways in which the region was using technology to enable citizens to propose and bring up questions into the political arena. By creating this possibility the Malmö region believed that politics would be made more accessible to a larger section of the citizenry.

Lars Höglund took his starting point in the large SOM-survey to attempt to deepen our understanding of the participatory elements of politics and the internet. My main beef was that I got stuck on the group they call “the internet generation” which was defined as those born between 1977-1997. What annoys me about this is that this groups’ aspect is that they have not experienced a pre-web age. Why this classification annoys me is that these digital natives (a term coined by Marc Prensky) are supposed to have special insights into technology. Let me give an analogy: While I was born during the age of the automobile this does not make me competent to talk in depth about the effects of cars on society, our dependence upon fossil fuels or the rise and fall of the car industry.

Last up – before the closing panel was me. I had been asked to talk about the links between social media and the law but I used my time to present some of the interesting points from my latest research into attempts by municipalities to regulate social media through policies. Its a work in progress and yesterday I addressed the concept of the municipality lawyer being negative to social media in a talk entitled Law is simple, people are not. Slides below

lag är enkel, människor är svåra

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One of the things we were asked in the panel was whats up next? What will we be doing with social media today and in the future. What is post-social media? All in all it was a very good meeting. Lots of interesting people and discussions. I am looking forward to the next time.

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Politics and social media #msmboras

Tomorrow is the second annual MSMBorås (twitter @msmboras & #msmboras) a growing interesting conference on the relationship between politics and social media. One of the great things is that this meeting does not take place in the political center of Sweden (i.e. Stockholm) but in the town of Borås.

The meeting is a good mix between researchers and active politicians, political commentators/observers and social media aficionados.

This year is opened by Matthew Barzun who will speak on the topic Social media, politics and democracy in the US. Today Barzun is the US Ambassador to Sweden but he has worked on Obama’s first campaign and has been invited back to lead the coming presidential campaign.

This will be followed by Marie Grusell talking on twitter in political elections, Per Schlingmann & Hampus Brynolf on social media in politics now and in the future, Anders Kihl on social media in local politics.

After lunch Jan Nolin presents on Wikipolitics as a collective method of political problem solving, Grethe Lindhe on citizen dialogues, Lars Höglund on the citizens opinions of social media in politics, then I will talk about legal consequences of social media use (kind of boring title – I wish I had chosen more wisely). Then the day is closed with a discussion.

This is going to be extremely interesting.

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Trapped in a tamagotchi

Spent the morning doing hamster work. This is the work that takes a long time but at the end of the day you realize that you have not really produced anything. Its all important work but its not creative or productive.

  • Check & empty spam filters for mail and blogs
  • Reply to “boring” emails that have been ignored in inbox
  • Clean inbox by deleting or storing dealt with emails
  • Update blog plugins
  • Browse through the overfilled rss reader

Not really sure what this kind of work can be compared to in the analog realm – its a bit like preparing a garden after winter, pruning for growth. Well that’s a positive spin on it. Otherwise I sometimes get the impression that I am a slave to my tools. My devices and software seem to need a constant stream of update and electricity to be content enough to work.

In 1996 the Akihiro Yokoi of WiZ Co. Ltd., and Aki Maita of Bandai Co. Ltd released the Tamagotchi on the world. It was (for those who chose not to remember) a very simple digital toy that needed constant attention in order to “live”. Parents had to take their children’s devices to work with them so that the precious pieces of plastic did not die while the children where at school.

Those who were not in the craze laughed.

But today my whole digital life seems to consist of me being trapped in a tamagotchi. My devices demand attention and can be quite adamant about getting it: I once had to throw away a digital thermometer that would not stop beeping out an ice warning every 5 minutes when the temperature dropped below 3 degrees. On my phone a blue or red occasionally blinks. Its communicating with me – but nowhere in the manual does it say what the lights mean. I usually restart the phone just to stop the blinking lights. The same phone, when fully charged flashes brightly, and can wake me up in the middle of the night.

And don’t get me started on updates!! Here is the wisdom of Izzard on the topic – all to cheer us up in the midst of digital work.

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Relational economies: Notes from a lecture

The CC Salon in Stockholm was a very enjoyable affair. The presentation by Gabriel Shalom & Jay Cousins was highly inspirational as were the discussions afterwards. My presentation was entitled The Role of Commons in Relational Economies and was an attempt to explore the intersection between economy, copyright and technology.

The Role of Commons in Relational Economies

I began by describing the move from the barter system to the monetary system and focused on the situations where uneven contributions take place. I described the situation where someone needed toothpaste and had a pig. By contributing the pig to the marketplace the returns must have been a lifetime of toothpaste. Obviously I am not an expert here but the value relationship between pig and toothpaste must be radically different. How do we value a single important contribution compared to a lifetime of regular small contributions? How can we compare a lifetime spent editing grammatical errors in Wikipedia to writing the most read article on Wikipedia. Which contribution will be the most famous? Which contribution is the most important?

What I was trying to do was to explain that the barter system is a long term trusting relationship were economic value is not the focus. By moving to a monetary transactional system we no longer need to trust or build relations. We focus solely on transactions and trust abstract systems.

Within these systems money becomes the autonomous manifestation of exchange relation.

However, early money was more than this and even had intrinsic value (i.e. value in itself) as examples of this I explained the dewarra (row of cowrie shells) to plåtmynt (image below)

The heaviest could weigh almost 20 kg. Image from Kungliga Myntkabinettet

Money quickly came to play an important role and began to be used as a form of social sanction in the form of fines (e,g, weregild) or forms of compensation that are oddly strange: Dowries as proof of wealth and buying partners, blackmail: a situation of information inequality, bribery: unjust friendliness.

As the goal of the lecture was to connect this discussion to copyright it was time to bring in the role of technology. It is often overlooked that copyright is all about technology. This is because copyright is all about the fixation of an idea. Ideas that are not expressed in a fixated form are unprotected. Its when the ideas become fixated (on paper, video, audio) that they are copyrightable.

Now the problem occurs when we have fixation as a focus and the law is about fixating the social agreement upon which society has arrived at a fair balance. In the case of copyright the modern system of copyright law was created/fixated in the 1950s. But what was the understanding of copyright in the 1950s? Well to demonstrate this I used this image of a vision of the future. This is what they thought the home computer would look like in 2004…image removed (see comments below)

So this was the visionary view of technology shared by the creators of copyright law. Naturally the law has been amended and adjusted but it is fundamentally the same. The visions of technology of the 1950s control the use of technology today and the future. All law is about the fixation of social agreements and copyright law reflects the understanding of an equitable use and protection of cultural products – based upon the technological possibilities in existence. When the law fixes a social agreement it fundamentally comes into conflict with the evolution of technology.

In the past 50 years technology has brought us (amongst many things) digitalization, connectivity and a multitude of devices.

These developments are interesting as they inadvertently provide an increased focus on the relational economy. Think about the work of Stallman and the Free Software movement that provides us with ample empirical proof that economic returns are not the necessary motivation for providing labor and enthusiasm. Or what about the Wikipedia project? Seriously people spending large parts of their lives in correcting articles other people write? And they do it, almost anonymously, for free. Transactional economics struggles to find a valid reason for these activities. We have heard them all… for example: youthful enthusiasm (i.e. it will pass soon whenthey realize the error of their ways), reputation in groups (i.e. you cannot be good – you have devious motives)

The problem with understanding the relational economics becomes more interesting when organizations like museums and archives begin putting their works online. Allowing users to interact and to add metadata. I showed this image by Carl Curman that has been lying in an archive for over a century but in the last two years has been viewed over 27 000 times.

Photograph by: Carl Curman (1900) Persistent URL: Read more about the photo database

By digitalizing the photo and making it available the image has “come back to life” and has been given a new relevance in a social setting. By allowing the audience to tag, comment and add meta data the Swedish National Heritage Board has developed a relationship with a larger audience. The benefits for everyone are obvious but attempting to decipher transactional costs and benefits are too complex to make an act like this interesting or maybe even profitable.

At this point I turned to Creative Commons and explained the role of licensing in the relational economy. While copyright has been fixed in the 1950s – when technological barriers made it difficult (next to impossible) for a larger group to create and spread material to a larger audience – the world today is different. “Everyone” has a phone in their pocket that can take pictures and record sound (even video). “Everyone” has computers and internet that creates the ability to create and share material. We the amateurs of the world are creating and communicating on a level unheard, or undreamt, of in the 1950s. The transactional costs and benefits of applying copyright law are too complex to work out on this level.

Here is where Creative Commons comes in. CC licenses are there to support the relational role in copyright. What does the creator want and how does he/she want her work to be used or abused.

In my early days as project lead for CC Sweden I was met with an accusation that CC is a band-aid on the brokenness of copyright law. By creating and supporting a system like CC we were simply applying artificial respiration to a dying system. From a transactional economics point of view this is understandable criticism (if you believe that copyright should die) but from the point of view of relational economics the licenses have nothing to do with aiding copyright – they are there to aid the creator and the relationships between the creator and his/her audience. They display the wishes and hopes of the creator and ask to be respected.

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The Future of Money

Tomorrow it’s time for the first Swedish CC Salon which will be held in Stockholm and focus on the topic The Future of Money. The main speakers are Gabriel Shalom & Jay Cousins but I will also have the opportunity to speak on the topic. The Future of Money is part of a Nordic CC Salon Tour, which is being held between 3rd – 7th of May 2011. This Nordic tour is very intense: May 3 is Copenhagen, May 4 Aarhus, May 5 Stockholm, May 6 Oslo and May 7 is Reykjavik.

Right now I am working on my part of the presentation which is being inspired by the fascinating work of Georg Simmel called The Philosophy of Money. My basic idea for the presentation is that the move from the barter system to the monetary system creates a major change in fundamental human relationships.

Where the barter system is a relational system, building by necessity on long term trust and relations. But along comes, by necessity, the monetary system. The long term relational trust is no longer necessary. All focus is now on the transaction and the human relations are changed from the relational to the transactional. Long term trust in others is not necessary, all efforts could be focused on trusting the abstract system of currency.

Our focus on the transactional system has been honed to the point where we dislike (or mistrust) the concept of relational trust in attempting to understand economic relationships. So when we attempt to understand why people spend their time in not for profit work or working without pay, in for example developing Free and/or Open Source Software or writing long articles in Wikipedia or assisting in non-profit organizations, we often struggle to understand the motivation that drives them.

A common explanation used is the idea that people work for reputation – but the flaw in this seems to be that we are simply replacing cash for reputation credits. In other words we are replacing one abstract monetary system for another. What this does not take into consideration is the long term relationships created by the social relations created through work for a common goal.

Well that’s where I am now. Lots of hours left before the actual event and I am looking forward to the feedback. If you are in Stockholm tomorrow please drop by Stallet on Stallgatan 7, we begin at 7pm.

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Barriers to Cultural Participation

Last week I completed my draft contribution to the Exploratory Workshop on Consuming the Illegal: Situating Digital Piracy in Everyday Experience which will be held in Leuven (17‐19 April 2011). The draft paper is called Barriers to Cultural Participation: Cultural Innovation and Control Online and attempts to go deeper into the problem of borrowing or appropriating earlier works in the creation of new cultural material.

What I am attempting to do is to point to the problem that while the law is a useful tool of regulation a great deal of regulatory power is in the hands of norms. The result is that amateur remixing is discriminated against and often runs the risk of being lost, instead of being encouraged as an important source for growth of cultural material.

So the paper looks at different forms of re-use (and gives examples of each). So in the end it looks like this… The thing to be discussed is therefore not the law but the ways in which certain types of remixing/borrowing/appropriation are tolerated while others seem not to be…

The end needs to be sharpened but here is what I have written so far (full draft is on scribd)

The topic of this paper was to take a closer look at some of the different ways in which cultural material is used and reused. In particular this work wanted to widen the discussion by not limiting it to being either a legal, technical or social topic. The production of innovative cultural material relies on a healthy access to earlier material, the creativity to expand on that material, the legal leeway to share that material and the technical platforms with which to reach other users.

For most of the history of copyright the most limiting factor for a large scale participatory cultural sphere has been limited by the lack of technical means with which to create and share the results of the work. Today these technological limitations have been reduced and are easily surpassed by most users wishing to participate in a cultural exchange.

We should therefore be entering into an unprecedented production of cultural material. One the one hand this is exactly what is happening. The amounts of copyrightable material being produced and spread today are far greater than in any other period in history. However, on the other hand, the legal risks and the regulation through licenses discussed here show that the material being produced and spread is discriminated against and is under risk of being removed, and its authors punished for their productions.

These issues need to be addressed. The original purpose of copyright, and its often legitimizing reason put forward today, is that by protecting the rights of the creator there will be an increased incentive to produce more material. Society offers a monopoly in return for an increased level of cultural material. However this bargain has been steadily eroded and is, at the point where it is technically possible for a wide scale participation in danger of being lost.

 

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What libraries should protect

In the digital age the idea of being concerned about someone knowing which books we read may seem strange. But as a matter of principle I feel it should be important that this kind of information is not saved. Very often we hear the argument: if you have done nothing wrong, then you have nothing to hide.

That argument is so stupid that its incredible. It shows that a pithy statement will turn peoples intelligence off. Think about any persecuted minority and then repeat the statement one more time. I dare you.

So back to the library.

The books I read can tell you a lot about me. But the problem is that you cannot know what books I read and how they have impacted my life from a list of books I have borrowed from the library. This list will tell you nothing about whether I read them, how I understood them, if I read them to criticize or to admire… or just to impress someone else. All you know is that I have borrowed them. Unfortunately, in times of stress, such data will be used as “proof” of something. And not only in times of stress.

In January this year the Swedish Justitiekanslern (Chancellor of Justice) found that the university library in Göteborg (my uni) was not wrong to save data on borrowed books and the borrower even after the books were returned. (case 2356-09-42: Personsuppgiftslagen (1998:204) är inte tillämplig på personuppgifter i ett låntagarregister som förs fortlöpande vid ett universitetsbibliotek decided 2011-01-17

Their reasoning is that the information about the books and borrower fall under the well established Offentlighetsprincipen (principle of public access) and would be saved – and made accessible to anyone who wants it. Information that falls under Offentlighetsprincipen may be removed from the archives under certain conditions.

In the case of the books individual borrowers have borrowed this data is removed two years after the library card expires.

Since I have had a library card at my library since 1997 or maybe even earlier all the books I have every borrowed from my university library are a matter of public record and can be extracted by anyone.

So I am dismayed, but not surprised, by the outcome of the decision by the Chancellor of Justice. But what really gets me annoyed is the attitude of the libraries. This is not the kind of data they should be collecting. This is not the attitude they should be having towards their readers. Their behavior does not promote openness, but rather will decrease the likelihood of people reading “suspect” material – whatever that may be. I thought libraries were all about open mindedness and learning. Now I am sure that what they are doing is convenient for them – and we have come to expect companies selling the souls of their employees and customers for their convenience.

But libraries? For shame.

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Passion and perseverance, not poetry, make a PhD

Sad, but unfortunately not uncommon, news today… yet another bright young colleague has dropped out from his PhD. The easy reaction was to throw out the obvious question: Why? But in reality it does not really matter. The reasons for people dropping doctoral studies are as varied, as there are people and even if you asked could you ever get the true reason for people’s actions?

But I still want to comment on the doctoral process. In 2006 I wrote a post called Advice to a shiny new PhD student which still contains some good advice.

What I want to add is that the work of the PhD is not a sprint it’s more like a marathon on a bad day. Its seems endless and thankless when you are doing it – sure some people wave to cheer you up on the way but in reality nobody cares about your work – but it’s the end that makes it worth it.

In a marathon you don’t want to be a specialist… You want to be the beige super generalist.

The PhD student will be surrounded by people who are brighter, more poetic, more prolific, more intelligent, better read, more beautiful, etc. In fact no matter what trait you can imagine there will be someone who is better than you. And this is not a depressing thought!?

To survive a PhD is not about being the best in those ways. It’s about become the best at a certain subject. To become the best in academia you really need two things more than anything else. First, a passion for the subject. The reason why your topic is interesting is because it is unexplored. The reason it is unexplored is usually because it is obscure. You will not be loved for you subject, you will be alone with your subject. To survive with little outside stimuli you need passion.

The second thing you will need is perseverance – because it will be boring. No matter how interesting it sounds any topic becomes boring. This does not mean it will never be exciting again – but recognize that you passion for your chosen topic will ebb and flow.

So ignore the poetry and get on with it!

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