{"id":6933,"date":"2010-09-09T10:09:48","date_gmt":"2010-09-09T14:09:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/etherwave.wordpress.com\/?p=6933"},"modified":"2010-09-09T10:09:48","modified_gmt":"2010-09-09T14:09:48","slug":"the-toronto-blog-collective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/2010\/09\/09\/the-toronto-blog-collective\/","title":{"rendered":"The Toronto Blog Collective"},"content":{"rendered":"

History of Science departments have a record of abject failure when it comes to maintaining a thriving presence in online discussion.\u00a0 University of Pennsylvania’s Logan Lounge<\/a> was a pioneering departmental effort, but soon sank into posting semesterly updates of upcoming colloquia, and, after 2008, stopped doing even that.\u00a0 The University of Minnesota program has also given it a go<\/a>, but never got things going very well (I expect more from my hometown Golden Gophers!).\u00a0 University College London apparently could not secure state funding and the support of local workers for the construction and maintenance of its STS Observatory<\/a>.\u00a0 The University of Oklahoma’s Hydra journal<\/a> died quietly soon after creating a site with professional-looking graphics.\u00a0 Ostensibly having an entire department dedicated to the task of maintaining a blog should make it easier for everyone — I know I wish I had more backup! — but this is apparently not so.\u00a0 Tragedy of the commons, or something, I guess.<\/p>\n

Libraries, archives, and museums have a much more impressive record.\u00a0 Oregon State’s Pauling Blog<\/a> continues to amaze me in its ability to churn out quality material on a single person week after week.\u00a0 The Copenhagen Medical Museion keeps a steady hand on the wheel<\/a> of its discussions of material culture and public presentation in the biomedical domain.\u00a0 The Wellcome Library blog<\/a> is excellent, and the Royal Society is off to a good start<\/a> as well.\u00a0 My employers, for lack of planning, did not fare so well<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Now there is blogging fever at the University of Toronto.\u00a0 Three students have started blogs: Jai Virdi<\/a>, Aaron Sidney Wright<\/a>, and Jonathan Turner<\/a>.\u00a0 In addition, there is a new group blog, The Bubble Chamber<\/a>, which aims to address a broader audience about matters of public interest.\u00a0 EWP wishes this new cauldron of effort well, but will observe that keeping a consistent blog requires either a deep well of subject matter to make public, or a willingness to grow in one’s ideas with time.\u00a0 History of Science scholarship encourages us to think that, by our capacity as people dedicated to the study of science and technology, we have the additional capacity to see-and-commentate at will, and that this ensures both good historiography and our value to the public sphere.\u00a0 A line of dead blogs (and declining blogs that will remain nameless) suggests we think we have more ideas than we really have.\u00a0 (Also: no whining about work loads — blogging should always augment your work, not distract you from it.\u00a0 Blogs should maintain an individualized pace and format appropriate to that task.)\u00a0 Toronto: the spotlight is on you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

History of Science departments have a record of abject failure when it comes to maintaining a thriving presence in online discussion.\u00a0 University of Pennsylvania’s Logan Lounge was a pioneering departmental effort, but soon sank into posting semesterly updates of upcoming colloquia, and, after 2008, stopped doing even that.\u00a0 The University of Minnesota program has also<\/p>\n

Continue Reading… The Toronto Blog Collective<\/span>Continue Reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6933\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}