[-empyre-] FW: Practice in Research: Useless Information

[Phi Shu]

@JohannesB


>

has anyone ever felt that the work produced in the university might be
> useless?  and thus "pure research" as was argued here, thus perfectly
> acceptable?
>
>
In terms of uselessness, quite certainly, but surely that doesn't just
apply to "work produced in the university" it applies to everything, we are
witnessing a kind of golden age of useless information. Then again, maybe
it's a case of it being potentially useful, rather than completely useless.
All those unconsulted documents in the library have the potential to be
useful, to someone, eventually, that's why they leave them
there, indefinitely. Put them all on-line is what I say, then the
probability of them becoming useful, to someone, will increase, same for
all the journals, open access, across the board.

With respect to the university situation, I would speculate that after the
viva at least 70% of that stuff (written stuff) is never again consulted.
But, I think today's PhD students should be canny enough to realise that
the window of opportunity they have to focus exclusively on
creative practice should also be used to build a profile (or raise it if
they already had one), because if they don't, and they finish the PhD
without having published, performed, released, whatever
(disseminate their work in one form or another), what's the point? sure,
they will hopefully leave better educated, but, in today's economic
climate, post-creative-practice-PhD-career-prospects are not that rosy, so
the opportunities afforded by being temporarily part of research based
community really should be exploited. Unless of course they get plenty of
teaching experience during the PhD, then they can probably stay in academia
and enjoy all the admin.
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