[-empyre-] Re: empyre digest, Vol 1 #139 - 7 msgs

[Adrian Miles <adrian.miles@uib.no>]

At 12:00 +1000 6/6/02, Brandon Barr wrote:
> This is an important shift, because it moves writing-as-practice into
> the public arena.  I had my writing students create Wiki pages
> instead of keeping a journal this last semester, and I saw a marked
> difference in the writing...precisely, I think, because the writing
> was done in the public sphere.  blogging breaks down the line between
> thought and presentation.  My blog server went down for over a week,
> and I felt completely unproductive, because my blog is my
> thinking--be it creative improvs, or sites that intrigue me and that
> I'm archiving for myself and others.

absolutely :-) and this is how my honours students treat their blogs. 
because it is public writing you have to be more articulate than what 
you'd write on a post it note (for instance). this means you have to 
make what you're thinking about reasonably clear and in doing that 
you have to actually deal with what you're thinking about. instead of 
just making an abstract aside that is unintelligible in 3 weeks.

> [snip stuff from jill]
>
> I've suggested elsewhere that blogs could offer a different sort of
> paradigm of measurement of the effectiveness of research--instead of
> peer-review, for instance.  Jill, I'd like to know whether you think
> blogging is as subversive as all that, or simply supplements the
> current research process.

how do you mean measurement? in teaching for instance i certainly 
assess blogs and regard them in many ways as a more significant form 
of academic writing than their essays. they certainly deal with more 
stuff more regularly in their blogs :-) but essays still have their 
place.

links to and from a blog clearly indicate a research community of 
peers, or at least peer endorsement, though this also applies to more 
traditional forms of academic web self publishing (a case i made 
several years ago at my university when i wanted a major online 
resource i self published to be accepted as a legitimate academic 
publication - it was traffic in and unsolicited peer endorsement via 
email that was accepted as peer review). but i think the way 
academics read other academic blogs is much like any other form of 
academic writing and acknowledgement.

i think there are certainly viable forms available for things like 
blogs to allow communities of users to write and in effect publish 
and for this to be peer reviewed via mechanisms like link analysis. i 
also think this will happen sooner rather than later, though some odd 
conservative ideas about what constitutes 'publishing' are in the 
way. :)

> > Do any of you read or write blogs?
>
> my blog is at http://brandonbarr.com/texturl/ and I'd LOVE to
> discover new academic blogs

jill's got a list off her blog, it's what she's called research 
blogs. (btw brandon, hi, know texturl....)

cheers
adrian miles
--
   
+  lecturer in new media and cinema studies 
[http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au/vog/vlog]
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