A little rant about the Academic game

Here is a little bit of an email I just sent to a colleague in which I rant (a little) about the state of AOM and having taken one-too-many sociology of knowledge classes.

I think AOM may have lost sight of its best purpose if it is all near-journal articles.  OTOH, that is probably why visual and round table sessions evolved.  Meanwhile, the near-journal expectations for normal papers helps to increase supply of citations for the burgeoning demand for more CV lines among the exploding business school faculty ever-urged on by the whipping of reputation-mad Deans, Presidents, and trustees.  Having a sociology of knowledge pair of lenses is really a fucking curse since I can both see through the BS artifices of knowledge production and also feel self-justified in not playing the game.  Ok, rant over.

Lessig talk on ‘hybrid economy’ March 27 || Bucknell University

I am encouraging all of my former Capstone (“Rise of the Network Society”) students to attend this one.   Lessig is an important voice discussing the pratcical and poitical implications of the overalps between technology, culture, law, and also politics.

As the press release states, Professor Eric Faden, who is bringing Lessig, is a client due to his creation of A Fair(y) Use Tale which explore issues of copyright protection.

Looks good!  Hope you can make it!

News: Lessig talk on ‘hybrid economy’ March 27 || Bucknell University
Lawrence Lessig, the renowned copyright and intellectual property rights author and Stanford Law School professor, will present a talk titled, “Remix — Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy,” on Thursday, March 27, at 7 p.m. in Bucknell University’s Trout Auditorium.

The talk is free and open to the public.

Scholarship 2.0: An Idea Whose Time Has Come

I am not an innovator, but maybe a first or late first adopter.   Of course, it varies by network too. At my university, I seem to be clearly an early adopter of many collaborative technologies (blogs, wikis, virtual worlds).  Anyway, this blog came up and seemed to be worth exploring further as my own scholarly work about Web 2.0/living web also takes on living web forms.

Mitchell Waldrop, coincidentally, is also the author of Complexity which is one of my favorite books and indirectly influenced my choices of scholarly interests in grad school and beyond.

This is a stub until I can look at the blog more.

Scholarship 2.0: An Idea Whose Time Has Come: <strong>Science 2.0</strong>
Scholarship 2.0 is devoted to describing and documenting the forms, facets, and features of alternative Web-based scholarly publishing philosophies and practices. The variety of old and new metrics available for assessing the impact, significance, and value of Web-based scholarship is of particular interest.

Bringing Second Life To Life: Researchers Create Character With Reasoning Abilities of a Child

Wow ! Welcome Hal 2000! Or the Oracle. Or agent Smith.

RPI: News & Events – Bringing <i>Second Life</i> To Life: Researchers Create Character With Reasoning Abilities of a Child

Teenage Suicides Bewilder an Island, and the Experts

That is the headline of a very sad story about a cluster of three suicides on Nantucket.  Too bad they didn’t seem to look for any sociology experts.  Starting with Durkheim’s Suicide there  is a lot of evidence that suicide is not exclusively a problem of the “head” but also of the community and society.  All of the experts are trying to help the individuals (and I am sure with the best of intentions).

My students and I read  about how suicides often spread like other social contagions or information cascades in Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point.  If this is the case, the the specific network structure will matter.  One advantage to understanding suicide as a social and not merely a psychological phenomenon is that intervention strategies can shift or adapt.  Unfortunately, it is not clear that the psychiatrists are making much headway on what to do.  This article summarizes research on suicides in Micronesia and ends up concluding that “sociocultural factors” may matter.

Teenage Suicides Bewilder an Island, and the Experts – New York Times
Then the specialists began to descend. Some visited classrooms, wanting to talk students through their grief. Another emphasized the importance of telling young people that suicide was wrong, and an awful way to solve problems. Still another promoted relaxation techniques and warned that suicidal behavior could be contagious.

I want to find out more about what conclusions and recommendations come from looking at this problem as a social fact as much as a psychological one.