Where Did All the Academic Social Networks Go?
When I first got “online” in the mid 90’s, I loved the Prodigy bulletin boards. Then, I found listservs and realized the importance of email. I was just a geeky high school student in rural South Carolina, but for the first time I had access to people around the world discussing my favorite subjects like cosmology, string theory and religion.
So, I immersed myself and learned more from the listserv’s and bulletin boards than I ever could have gathered from the limited public library in my hometown of 5,000 or from TV. It was an amazing and magical time for a young guy with an interest in things that people in geographic proximity didn’t care about.
When I shipped off to Wofford College in 1996, I kept up with my web ways and as I studied religion and history in college, I kept on participating on boards, on listservs and then chat rooms (before the 14 year olds and pedophiles took over).
Ten years later, the web has moved on to social networking and social media, but academic discussions are still limited to listservs and bulletin boards. There are places for those, of course, but I hope the kids with an interest in string theory back home in Mullins are able to find the kind of resources and experts on the topics like I found. I fear they aren’t finding those resources because academics is in a social web time warp.
Granted, there are blogs like Pharyngula and networks of blogs such as Seed and ScienceBlogs… but it just feels different.
posted: 07 May 30
under: Teaching, technology