Blogging and academia II

More about the same:

Some additional discussion on my talk. In the first comment, I identify what I said about 43 Things. More importantly, in the second comment, I elucidate what I mean my reducing the big spike. "Power laws develop only under certain conditions, which I describe in my talk. Change the conditions - as I proposed - and you change the power law." By Stephen Downes and Others, Common Craft, February 23, 2005 [via OLDaily]
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The fact that we’re here for a blog conference says something about how we are at the very beginning of something and trying to understand it. It’s like phones or cars, you don’t see people having a conference discussing how phones or cars are going to change the world – it’s something everyone takes for granted. They did have conferences in the beginning their history, but now it seems silly. It won’t be long until the same is true for blogs – it’ll just be a part of what we do. [more here]

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There are much more links and audio-files on NorthernVoice and things disccussed there...

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Open Academics:

Since the invention of the printing press, and more so since World War II, academic research has become a major industry, propelling the academic publishing industry to become a massive enterprise that has overwhelmed researchers. In the 1980s alone, over 30 000 journals were created causing researchers to often complain of being overwhelmed with information. Consequently, experts no longer have time to properly peer review new articles. Errors published in articles go unfixed, or require the expense of new articles to correct. Existing research is often overlooked, leading to redundant work or missed linkages.

The press is only a relatively recent development, and the Internet is even newer. The Academy has undergone many changes in media in its history, from oral culture to literacy onward. This paper will perform a comparative historical analysis of changing media's impact on social practices in academia in order to extrapolate how academia will be re-organized in the age of the Internet.

This predictive framework will be applied to Stevan Harnard's valiant efforts to change academia. An attempt will be made to explain why his initiatives have gotten narrower and narrower over time after repeated false starts. Recommendations to how to more effectively achieve his goals will be offered.

Sunir Shah's presentation on the topic at the ASIS&T 04.