Thursday, March 10, 2005

 

Network effect kicks in for IB

Coincident mentions of IlliGAL Blogging in Smart Mobs and KDNuggets drove site visitorship to back-to-back record highs Tuesday and Wednesday with 127 and 143 visits respectively. A portion of the bump resulted when A blog doesn't need a clever name picked up Smart Mobs citation of a portion of the post The academy vs. blogging. Watch out Instapundit.

Comments:
Below is the correction I posted to Smart Mobs:

"David Goldberg wrote the words in the above citation; he was paraphrasing and extending my comment. Nevertheless, thanks for the hat tip!

I originally argued that some would resist the blogosphere's opensource, micro-theorizing becasue the research model subverts the status quo academic research model--not power structure. Though 'bloggers as scholars' and 'bloggers as critics' are probably both correct.

In the academic model, a researcher carefully builds a macro-theory over a period of years in isolation. Blogs are too fast and too flexible. Undermining "authority" is a minor issue compared to the speed at which macro-theories can emerge from inteacting micro-theorists in the blogosphere. Furthermore, the emergent marco-theory (or 'meme complex') will tend to be more robust since its constituent parts--its micro-theories (or 'memes')- survived open source fitness testing and selection.

The trend to watch is authors writing books while keeping a blog. How do comments, links, and trackbacks shape the writing process? Test cases: Tom Barnett, Scoble, Chris Anderson, and...you?

Today, Bill Tozier also played with the ideas of speed and robustness. Note the allusions to fossils and relevance questioning:

http://williamtozier.com/slurry/comment/academia/seventySomeWords.html

See also:

http://illigal.blogspot.com/2005/03/models-live-in-error-cost-plane.html

Actually, I expect the young turks of academia to defect to blogs early, "release early and often" their battle banner.

More sources:

http://illigal.blogspot.com/2005/03/models-live-in-error-cost-plane.html

---
an.anderson@gmail.com
 
I should also correct this point:
"In the academic model, a researcher carefully builds a macro-theory over a period of years in isolation."

Actually, the trend in academics has been away from that model. In recent times, there have been more group papers as topics become sufficiently specialized and the pace into the uncharted spaces hastens.
 
Hey! Stop by health agency
 
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