Posts from — September 2003

so you don't know how to use chisenbop, or even know what it is, well go to the curious math site to find out that and other semi-entertaining things with simple math.

Computers & Writing 2004: Now taking submissions. Computers & Writing 2004 in Hawai'i, “Writing in Globalization: Currents, Waves, Tides” is now taking submissions.

On a side note, I just downloaded Mozilla and am loving it! [Kairosnews - A Weblog for Discussing Rhetoric, Technology and Pedagogy]

this looks like a cool conference

Opus to return.

Opus to return as the Washington Post will announce a new Berke Breathed cartoon this Sunday.

[vanderwal.net Off the Top]

this is the best news in quite a while. support your local cartoonist, or at least your favorite ones!

Academic Hiring: An Ethical Dilemma. Joseph Duemer posts about an ethical dilemma in hiring: Your division hasn't hired a tenure-track line for four years & those hires were to replace someone who resigned & someone who was denied tenure; you have been making up the… [Invisible Adjunct]

to me it seems that you have one choice, to do a national search and to do it right, because if you don't, you will likely be held liable at some point in time.

The Microsoft mental framework, i.e. The Microsoft 'box'. Study: Windows Can Be Cheaper to Use Than Linux: “SEATTLE (Reuters) – Developing Windows-based applications is easier and cheaper than making Linux (news – web sites)-based applications, according to a study paid for by Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq:MSFT – news) and released on Monday.” “The study compared applications built to run over the Internet on Microsoft's .NET platform to applications developed with J2EE, a development platform backed by Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq:SUNW – news) favored by the Linux community.” While the above study appears to have revealed that developing with .NET might be cheaper than J2EE, there does not seem to be any relevance to software development in general. Further, if indeed it is true that developing relevant applications with .NET is cheaper than developing them with J2EE, one can easily assume that Microsoft spent more money in designing the study such that it report on those aspects that Microsoft 'strategy' is cheaper. I don't think anyone doubts that some Microsoft software might be better than other software. However, if this was meant to be a PR statement, it is a very poor one indeed. Hey Microsoft, people out there think outside of the Microsoft 'box'…. [infosophy: socio-technological rendering of information]

The Chilean “socialist Internet” – circa 1972!

When Pinochet's military overthrew the Chilean government 30 years ago, they discovered a revolutionary communication system, a 'socialist internet' connecting the whole country. Its creator? An eccentric scientist from Surrey, UK named Stafford Beer.

This is a fascinating story. And yes, he really did link up Chile in '72 – long before the Internet…

[Politics in the Zeros]

though it was a network, i don't think it was an internetlike network, it was closer to a phone network, but the uses it is put to are interesting and worth exploring/mentioning, because implicitely this is what post-fordist political economy is interested in, the mechanisms that allow economies to operate, in this case it was a very real technics, but in other places it is cultures, beliefs, fantasies, etc.

AAUP Issues Policy Statement on Contingent Appintments and the Academic Profession. Ten years ago, the Association reported that non-tenure-track appointments accounted for about 58 percent of all faculty positions in American higher education. As of 1998, such appointments still accounted for nearly three out of five faculty positions, in all types… [Invisible Adjunct]

I'm not sure if there are any real solutions to any problems, if they are problems in this arena. I've been non-tenure track faculty since '98 and it can be a great job, though I don't teach as much as adjuncts. One thing that has happened to cause the growth of professional faculty such as myself is the information technology boom where you needed to increase the technical workers in higher education to allow students to take advantage of technology. This is happening again in research universities with the future biotech bust, where they have to hire alot of staff to support one professors research, expanding the professional ranks, etc.

Uncitedness. Here's an interesting article from a decade ago with (perhaps)
surprising figures on the uncitedness
of academic articles by discipline. It seems disheartening to observe
that much published research doesn't seem to be of use to other
researchers – at least not enough to warrant a citation. I wonder how
things have evolved
since.

Research Papers: Who's Uncited Now?

This has also got me wondering about rates of unlinkedness for weblog
posts. Surely they are huge – though it should be kept in mind that in
the blogosphere the order is “publish, then filter” rather than the other way around.
[Seb's Open Research]

——-

I'm not sure of the methods used here, but I know the ISI recently cited isn't very revealing for social sciences and humanities. However, i think that there are several reasons why the traditions are different in measurements here. Primarily i think it might have to do something with the draft-dissemination models that occur before publishing. A draft dissemination model is how drafts come to be read before printed by their audiences. some traditions have this strongly embedded others do not.

My other thought on this is that citations should go up as knowledge communities get narrower in focus, and thus have fewer people involved. In large disciplines this then is an indication of fragmentation, or the multiplications of many subdisciplines, as there are in the hard sciences, where physics is just something you teach to underclassmen and upperclasswomen choose and begin to learn a subdiscipline.

social construction of technology. In class today, we were introduced to the Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) framework/methodology. I am certainly not an expert… [zephoria]

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I'm not a big fan of SCOT finding epistemological and methodological problems with the paradigmaticity of technics in most of that work, but many people find it very useful.

Adjunct College. Well, now that I've got a handle on this blogging thing, I think I'm finally ready to get with the programme. I've had done with such old-fashioned notions as the history profession as guild, academic work as quasi-sacred calling, the… [Invisible Adjunct]

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this is the beginning of the end of something, though i'm not sure what, though surely if this becomes profitable, it will be increasingly problematic for many universities.