A negative comment on the blogs.
Alan Jacobs reflects critically on web logs for lack of intellectual fulfillment. (*) He’s on to something. It’s a medium that some compared to that of the pamphleteers of the American revolution, but which now more closely resembles a mudfight.
Recently, a professor at an American university tacitly threatened a person’s family because of the person’s web log. The professor then resigned her professorship. (†) It is one example of overheated rhetoric crossing the line into the reprehensible. Yet, this sort of thing has happened several times in American political debate lately. The public discourse grows cruder and coarser. It is easy to brush aside concern and state that it was always like this, when it was sometimes but not always like this.
Yet, Jacobs focuses on the technological aspects of web logs as contributing to the sterility of discussion hosted there. Based on my experience of over a decade of Internet-based electronic discussions, I would have to agree. Internet-based intellectual discussions that are deeply fulfilling are rare, more rare than in real life.
Intellectual collaboration does work in some fields, such as computer science. The free and open source software movements have had successful development projects. Many of them, such as OpenBSD, have regular (such as annual) in-person meetings to facilitate the collaboration. These groups have shared goals and shared outlooks. Even they have disputes, which causes the code to be forked. The success in software development has not carried over to academic topics such as English literature.