[-empyre-] blogs v. academia

[Brandon Barr <barr@mail.rochester.edu>]

At 11:35 AM +1000 6/6/02, *star[.dot]*star wrote:
> as u noted brandon, the act of blogging does move procedural writing 
> in2 a more public meshing of|exposure 2 information & corresponding 
> communication strata[s]......i also c it as manifesting the 
> potential 2 realign educative|theoretical discourse, in that blogs 
> act 2 actively inject the author/writer/textualiser's ego [in a 
> psychoanalytical sense] in2 contexts that m.part knowledge without 
> c.king 2 data-sanitize or information-objectify, or [obviously] 
> ad.here 2 academic|scientific clinical rigor or make the author 
> passive|invisible......

in what ways do you see it realigning discourse?  i would like to 
believe that blogs will do some realigning.  normally technologies DO 
shape their potential uses (dishwashing machines have made 
non-dishwasher-safe dishes pretty hard to find) and usually that 
shaping is strict.  but i wonder if academia has its own conceptual 
"machinery" that shapes its discourses.  in other words, academia 
might be the exception to the rule: a discourse system that shape the 
technologies it ultimately uses.  hence that ugly term "innappropiate 
media"...

--
Brandon Barr
University of Rochester
http://brandonbarr.com