Just about every single day, I get sucked into learning about some one’s work online. Like for example, they’ll comment on a blog, and I’ll click their little linky name, and it will go to their web site/blog/whatever, and there I’ll find out a little about them, and then I’ll be think but wait, they said something really interesting. I want to know more about them (I always want to know more. A tiring characteristic of mine for some.).
The next thing you know I’ve spent 20 minutes and have a pretty good idea of what they’ve done over the course of their career, because I found their CV. I’ve always thought this was a guilty pleasure of mine that had no real value. It was a little time suck, and when I did it, I felt I was just indulging my endless curiosity. You know what, though? I’m really starting to feel like I have a sense of what the cool kids in sociology are doing. In a creepy I’ve-never-met-most-of-them-but-I-know-things-about-them way. (I say “cool kids” but what I really mean is “extremely successful adults.” Sociology celebrities, even. [<-- (c) Jeremy Freese])
This line of reasoning lead me to realize yet again how amazing the internet is. Up to this point in history, everyone was “making history” all the time, but very little of it was being recorded. Historical accounts are all biased, sometimes wildly and intentionally. Nowadays, though, many of us are making history and then writing it down and leaving it out for everyone to subscribe to, Google, and ponder. Or, perhaps more accurately, some of the history we’re making is happening in a recorded atmosphere. We’re both creating our own stories and reacting to events around us. And it’s all happening in the same space as more “official” documentation of our times. If you search for something on the internet, you might get a NYT hit, but you might also get a hit from Joe Schmoe’s blog. This has the effect of de-professionalizing gatekeeping. You don’t have to be a journalist or an historian to decide what’s interesting; just Google whatever you want to know. (There are, of course, huge issues with this, but that’s another post.)
Anyway, I was just thinking that although I am totally green and have only been studying sociology for a little over a year, I know a hell of a lot more about what’s going on in the discipline than I might otherwise, and it’s all because of the internet. I read the blogs of department chairs, well-known publication editors, and extremely well-published individuals. In some cases, I sort of feel like I know them. This state of affairs was not even possible when I was an undergrad just 10 years ago. I read my GW email in Pine, yo. And walked uphill to school in the snow. Barefoot.
Sometime in the future when we’re all dead and gone, will undergrads be reading our blog posts and comments in order to learn the history of sociology? That’s a funny thought, isn’t it?
Yea, it is freaky, I’ve now been reading some blogs for YEARS. But I have to remind myself that we don’t REALLY know the sociological web-lebrities. Even those who delight in putting their endearing neuroses on display are still carefully stage-managing their web-dentities…or so I hear, second and third hand from some of the people who REALLY know them. In the end, I’m not so sure that we greenhorns know any more about what is going on intellectually in the discipline than we did before. Yea, bloger1 is probably on Ambien, blogger2 is kind of a bore, and blogger3 is pedant, but, in the end, I don’t think I learn anything about sociology. As my cellmate said the other day, if D.C. is Hollywood for ugly people, the academic blogosphere is D.C. and Hollywood for those without the social skills to make it in either.
pine! ha ha ha! oooh, that takes me back. i should talk about that with my media and technology class this morning…
Ha! I thought I was the only one who tracked down the websites and cv’s of everyone entering the socioblogosphere! What’s really fun is figuring out who the pseudonominous bloggers are. I take those as a personal challenge
.
Maybe just reading the people and tracking down their cv’s isn’t quite enought to have your finger on the pulse of sociology, but I think there’s something to having a sort of spidey-sense regarding who’s doing what where in the discipline.
And it’s not like we just read each other’s blogs. It’s not uncommon for these reader relationships to flow off-blog.
Your post kinda reminds me of the Steampunk ethos of putting creative and intellectual power back into the hands of the people.
She who controls the data controls the world!!! But with the internet, we all can control the data together.
Anomie: I hear you re: pseudonominous bloggers – I figured one out recently, and it was exciting
Also: Power to the people!
JW: Haha I hope they enjoy it! I looked for a screenshot very briefly, but the link was enough. Especially since the first thing it says is that Pine is no longer being developed.
Rachel: Yes, well, I’m with Goffman. Everyone manages their identity all the time, not just on blogs. I was kidding about the sociology celebrity thing – Jeremy Freese wrote the phrase sarcastically one time and I thought it was hilarious. I love sociology, and I respect the people who do well at it. But it’s sociology, and I don’t think that word goes very well with “celebrity” – at least not with a straight face. I try to keep my own and others’ blogosphere musings in perspective.