IT Conversations hosts the complete audio archive of the Bloggercon III held November 2004. My fourth stop was the Academia Session, hosted by Jay Rosen.

quick notes:

  • killer question: why should (or should not) academics blog?
  • in part the academic publishing model was based on limited publishing resources (peer review, printed publication = expensive,..). Blogs provide a new way for this that exceeds digitizing journals as PDFs.
  • dissemination of ideas that have been closed within the academy vs. academia as system based upon keeping information closed
  • various use cases (professor student interaction; research collaboration; collaborate workspaces; self-promation;…)
  • possible changes: broader audience; history of thoughts; interactivity; possibility for a less civilized discourse, noise; attacks on the reputation system; uncontrolled utterances (no prefilter); publication of unfinished texts;…
  • blogging is symbiotic to other knowledge generating machines, not a replacement
  • unprecedented confrontation with legitimacy (what are you guys doing all day?)
  • loss of prestige which relies in part on the exclusiveness of the discourse, on incomprehensible and intimitating language.
  • institutions are founded on the control (how to generate, disseminate, monetize) of the knowledge; blogging attacks the very DNA of this principle

Previous stops were the Newbie Session, the Overload Session, and the Journalism Session.