Academia

Blogging in the private/public divide

Part of blogging is attempting to figure out why we blog? Not all blogs pose this question but it appears often enough* to be recognised as being a common question. This question becomes even more relevant when the blogger takes active risks by blogging.

In an earlier post (blogging revisited 21/1105) I reported about an article concerned with the risks being taken by job-seeking academics who blog. The author of the article wrote that their blogs prevented the potential employer from hiring since they revealed a different side to the applicant than that presented at the formal interview.

A temporary prosecutor in San Francisco blogged about a case he was prosecuting:
Karnow didn’t find the postings prejudicial enough to throw out the entire case, as the defense wanted. But in turning down that motion to dismiss this week, the judge still came down hard on ex-prosecutor Jay Kuo, calling his conduct “juvenile, obnoxious and unprofessional.” … (via Lunda Wright)

Other bloggers take greater risks as whistleblowers or reporting on corrupt and/or repressive governments. While some bloggers and blogs are well protected using different means many are open and tracing the authors is a (relatively) easy task.

Organisations such as the EFF have created documents to help those who need to blog anonymously â??How to Blog Safely (About Work or Anything Else)â?? but these are either not widely known or widely used.
There seems to be something special about the blog and its place in the private/public divide. The blog is a private diary and yet it is open to the world.  The privacy promotes the sharing of secrets while the public the desire to communicate.

Why take the risks? Are they really risks or is blogging perceived to be a private act? Even though most bloggers are aware of their publicâ?¦

*Some examples from Google on the search â??why I blogâ??
Watermark – Jacobsen – Under the sun – Media Metamorphosis –

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Languages Online

The web began as an English place. To some the idea was that national, natural and cultural
boundaries were irrelevant. The web created a situation were everyone could communicate – if they did so in English. This is changing – fast.

The growth of alternative languages is not the story of esperanto but rather, as connectivity improves, the web begins to reflect something other than the countries who were first online in large numbers.

Measured by blogs – which are argumentatively the largest form of personal online mass communication and using one of the largests tracking services these results have been presented (Sifry’s Alerts – the state of the blogosphere with more data and also caveats about collection and validity).

English is no longer the largest language. Technorati now has more Japanese posts than English. In March 2006

37% of posts are Japanese
31% of posts are English
15% of posts are Chinese

And China is just beginning.
OK – so this is not about trying to find the first nail in the coffin of the English language but it is very interesting to see the changes which are taking place. The natural position of power held by the English language is no longer a given.

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Rainy Sundays

Its almost a cliché. Its a rainy Sunday afternoon! The good news is that a large second hand bookstore nearby (Röde Orm in Haga) was having a major sale 10 kr per book. Most of the good stuff was gone but I came away with Lars-Ingvar Sörenson licenciate thesis from 1997 entitled Naturrätt, egendomsrätt och praxis (Natural rights, Property rights
and praxis). I am looking forward to reading it.

It begins with a quote from Sitting Bull’s speech 1875 where he speaks about his enemy and says, amongs other things:

They claim this mother of ours, the Earth, for their own use, and fence their neighbors away from her, and deface her with their buildings and their refuse. They compel her to produce out of season, and when sterile she is made to take medicine in order to produce again. All this is sacrilege. This nation is like a spring freshet; it overruns its banks and destroys all who are in its path. We cannot dwell side by side. (online version included here)

What can be better on a rainy sunday?
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Law & Internet Cultures

I reviewed Kathy Bowrey’s Law & Internet Cultures, Cambridge University Press for Web Journal of Current Legal Issues. Bowrey’s book is a very good piece of research and writing. Here is the punchline of my review:

This is not a book for someone looking for a quick answer or a legal ruling. It is not a howto book. It is a book for large groups of academics, activists, businessmen, lobbyists politicians and technologists who want to understand more about how the Internet as a sociotechnical system works. It is a book for anyone who wants to think and discuss the role of the Internet in society today.

Once again we see an example of how Australian legal authors are rising to the challenge to define Internet culture and legislation. The view from the antipodes is not particularly different or odd so as to be outside the interest of Internet scholars but rather refreshing, like familiar stories told with a different flavour. Even those who have heard them before will take something new with them from reading this book. ([2006] 2 Web JCLI).

In other words. Buy it or borrow it – its a great read. For more on Bowrey’s research take a look at her web site: Chickenfish.cc/copy.

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Hi-Tech Trash

Are you old enough to remember asking why you would want or need a mobile phone? How many have you had so far? How many phones will the average person have in a lifetime? And what will the cumulative effect be?

The picture above of discarded mobile phones in a landfill, Orlando, Florida, USA, 2004. (photo by Chris Jordan via I Txt, Therefore I am) click here for a larger image.

This is scary stuff and requires more examination so I am sure that I will get back to this subject soon. In the meantime check out some of these reading tips.

Check out:

Giles Slade “Made to Break – Technology and Obsolescence in America” Harvard UP.

Elizabeth Grossman “High Tech Trash – Digital Devices, Hidden Toxins, and Human Health” Island Press (forthcoming)

Elizabeth Grossman “Where computers go to die — and kill“, Salon.com
Elizabeth Grossman “How to recycle your computer“, Salon.com

(Litterature tips via Question Technology)

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Scientific & personal revolutions

The problem with the development of science is our need to draw straight lines. We want to believe that science is the incremental, linear, progressive, growth of knowledge in society. We know it isn’t true but we do so all the same.
In 1935 Ludwik Fleck wrote on the development of science (Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact). According to him one of the major stumbling blocks in scientific development was the ruling ideas (thought styles) which have been established within the totality of scientific thought (thought collective). The thought collective was made up of individual members but was greater than the sum of individuals since the ideas remained strong even if members left the collective.

These ideas dove-tail very nicely into Thomas Kuhnâ??s ideas (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions) that science passes through revolutions (paradigm shifts) were first new ideas are resisted until the normative thought style no longer fits the understanding of the results being brought forward by scientists.
Its easy to giggle at the stupidity of past knowledge – sometimes my students have a hard time understanding how people in the past could have been so ignorant (as opposed to our enlightened state). Sometimes I try to compare this scientific development to individual development and ask them to think about the last time they had a paradigm shift of their own.

Two doctoral thesis’ on/connected to Fleck
One in archeology by David Loeffler â??Contested Landscapes/Contested Heritageâ?? from 2005 (uses Fleck’s ideas) and one in philosophy by Bengt Liliequist â??Ludwik Flecks jämförande kunskapsteoriâ?? (in Swedish).

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We got W

Its not every day that an alphabet grows. But the Swedish alphabet now has 29 letters! This is because W is now seen as a letter in its own right (as opposed to a strange V). The change has come about in the new Swedish Academy dictionary rumours say that the main reason for this change is the webâ?¦

Otherwise my favourite new word in the dictionary is SnÃ¥lsurfa (miserly surfing) â?? which basically means using someone elseâ??s wifi instead of buying your own.

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Define disaster?

What is a disaster and how does it compare to a catastrophe or a tragedy? A few months ago I began thinking about this. I wanted to use this as part of a future lecture on the effects of technology (and probably an advanced form of procrastination). The basic idea is that most of us have short memories. We trust technology implicitly and we see the failure of technology as a brief, unfortunate anomaly.

While writing about the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl accident these thoughts came back and I began to dig for a suitable list of man-made disasters. The man-made is an easy criterion since all technology is man-made (this is a specie-ist argument where I am brutally discounting tools made by animals and aliens). But what other criteria should be involved when attempting to demonstrate the failures of technology and their connection to trust?

  • War is a disaster but it is for the most part intentional.
  • The slow erosion of the ozone layer may be a disaster but â?? do we include it?
  • How does one differentiate between extinction and natural selection in relation to the disaster?
  • What about â??naturalâ?? disasters which have been triggered or aggravated by technology?

Therefore for the purpose of a lecture on trust in technology events can have disastrous consequences without being disasters.

Feel free to add comments on this! To be continuedâ?¦

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In Lund

Tomorrow I am off to Lund to participate in the third Nordic Conferences on Scholarly Communication hosted by Lund University Libraries.

Downtown Lund

Here is the blurb

In order to discuss, present and analyse the problems and challenges that arise within scholarly communication Lund University Libraries invite scholars, publishers, vendors, editors, librarians and other interested parties to the Third Nordic Conference on Scholarly Communication 24 – 25 April 2006. The conference takes place every second year and aims to be an important contribution to the discussion and to the development within the Nordic countries.

The conference website.

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