Thursday, September 21, 2006
Why Blogs Suck, A reply.
Ethan Leib of Prawfsblawg posts an interesting response to Brian Leiter's recent piece in the Yale Pocket Part entitled Why Blogs Are Bad For Legal Scholarship. Like most of what Leiter writes, the piece is thoughtful and goes against popular enthusiasms. In my not so thoughtful reply, I explain why I agree and disagree with his analysis and conclusions. Posted below for your convenience.
It seems like Leiter's central objection to blogging is that it democratizes information in a bad way. I disagree but I see his point. Blogs do make it possible for anyone to publish their opinions. The democratic problem of blogs is not only that ease of access and multiplicity of opinions, but also that the evaluative measure that promotes blog popularity is the acceptance and promotion of non-specialists. Leiter is specific on this point:
begin quote:
The underlying speculative psychology here may or may not be accurate, but the phenomenon seems real enough: an opinion that appears to be informed gains credibility by virtue of being repeated and thus becoming current in discourse.
The relevance to the blogging phenomenon should be clear enough. Imagine that the author of the widely read Generic Law Blog runs a glowing post on Monday morning declaring his good friend’s new article to be “an excellent discussion, much worth reading.”
:end quote
Leiter observes that this results in the puffery of work that truly informed opinion finds laughable.
I think much of what Leiter observes is true and none of it can be dismissed without thought. However, I am surprised that he does not recognize that this phenomenon is not a new one. The trend has long been the incredible multiplication of information, resulting in fields of expertise being ever more narrowly defined, and, the antidote for the problem are "mediating institutions." If in the old good world, there were not the problems in the bad new world, there would not be the New York Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, and all the other filters, including, yes, journals and law reviews, all of these things that serve to filter the huge amount of information that there is to process. Parallel institutions are developing slowly on the internet. Most people read only a narrow section of the internet and rely on information provided by only a small number of sources. I read Leiter's piece as an argument for more "expert mediators." But I wonder if his argument isn't undercut by his example of Derrida. Isn't it the case that the same forces pre-internet resulted in the publication, puffery, and cult status of this figure, who Leiter contends deserves marginalia? Yes, the internet is capable of accelerating this process. However, it may well provide the antidote for it too. In the past, "intellectual frauds" were allowed to metastasize without receiving any corrective treatment. By the time that the scapel of critical judgement was brought to bear, it could not cut away all of the diseased flesh. Today, an alert Leiter or analogue can immediately make available a cure. Yes, poor information can explode faster than ever before. But it can also implode faster than ever before.
The problem that Leiter identifies is a real and significant one that demands attention. It is, however, not a new one. Blame the printing press, not the internet. And maybe the internet is the vaccine as well as the virus.
Cross-posted to my unpopular blog.
It seems like Leiter's central objection to blogging is that it democratizes information in a bad way. I disagree but I see his point. Blogs do make it possible for anyone to publish their opinions. The democratic problem of blogs is not only that ease of access and multiplicity of opinions, but also that the evaluative measure that promotes blog popularity is the acceptance and promotion of non-specialists. Leiter is specific on this point:
begin quote:
The underlying speculative psychology here may or may not be accurate, but the phenomenon seems real enough: an opinion that appears to be informed gains credibility by virtue of being repeated and thus becoming current in discourse.
The relevance to the blogging phenomenon should be clear enough. Imagine that the author of the widely read Generic Law Blog runs a glowing post on Monday morning declaring his good friend’s new article to be “an excellent discussion, much worth reading.”
:end quote
Leiter observes that this results in the puffery of work that truly informed opinion finds laughable.
I think much of what Leiter observes is true and none of it can be dismissed without thought. However, I am surprised that he does not recognize that this phenomenon is not a new one. The trend has long been the incredible multiplication of information, resulting in fields of expertise being ever more narrowly defined, and, the antidote for the problem are "mediating institutions." If in the old good world, there were not the problems in the bad new world, there would not be the New York Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, and all the other filters, including, yes, journals and law reviews, all of these things that serve to filter the huge amount of information that there is to process. Parallel institutions are developing slowly on the internet. Most people read only a narrow section of the internet and rely on information provided by only a small number of sources. I read Leiter's piece as an argument for more "expert mediators." But I wonder if his argument isn't undercut by his example of Derrida. Isn't it the case that the same forces pre-internet resulted in the publication, puffery, and cult status of this figure, who Leiter contends deserves marginalia? Yes, the internet is capable of accelerating this process. However, it may well provide the antidote for it too. In the past, "intellectual frauds" were allowed to metastasize without receiving any corrective treatment. By the time that the scapel of critical judgement was brought to bear, it could not cut away all of the diseased flesh. Today, an alert Leiter or analogue can immediately make available a cure. Yes, poor information can explode faster than ever before. But it can also implode faster than ever before.
The problem that Leiter identifies is a real and significant one that demands attention. It is, however, not a new one. Blame the printing press, not the internet. And maybe the internet is the vaccine as well as the virus.
Cross-posted to my unpopular blog.
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Where were you on 9-11?
There have been a number of good reminisences about 9-11 in the old JFK assassination where were you? mold. Here's mine.
For me, the attacks took place at night. I was living in Taibei at the time. A friend had flown in from Tokyo on a business trip with a colleague. A mutual friend and I were meeting them for dinner. We met up in the Taipei Hilton for dinner. We had a pleasant dinner, marked by good humor and a bit of politics. Then we headed to Ziga-Zaga, a bar within the hotel, for some drinks. The visitors headed up to their rooms to take a conference call. My friend returned and we started chatting again. A few minutes later, his colleague came down. He quietly observed that a plane had flown into a building in New York. The scene was surreal. People were drinking and chatting. A live band was playing. There were tvs hung behind the bar. I asked the bartender to change the channel to the BBC or CNN. He changed it to BBC. The first image we saw was a split screen. Both sides were a mass of smoke and dust. One side was labeled New York, the other Washington, D.C. I pointed at it to the guy next to me. He glanced up and went back to his conversation. We decided to retreat to one of the hotel rooms so we could hear the commentary.
When we got up there and settled in, the magnitude of what was happening set in. In fact, it seemed even worse. The first scene when we turned on CNN on was a plane hitting one of the towers. It must have been the second plane. Death tolls were projected at 10, 20, even 50 thousand. Luckily, this did not come to pass. But there was plenty of horror nonetheless. The scenes from the World Trade Center played over and over as relentless speculation about who, why, what went on. CNN was a babbling group of idiots. The BBC coverage was so much more adult.
We drank all night and lamented the end of life as we knew it. The next day, I went to work. There the tremendous outpouring of affection and sympathy began. To be an American overseas in the first weeks after 9-11 was to be the recipient of an amazing outpouring of compassion. It ended quickly enough, but I will never forget being hugged spontaneously by an Iranian friend who told me of demonstrations in Tehran demanding that if the Iranian government had anything to do with the attack that they resign. Or my German friend writing me to tell me that he went to a massive demonstration of solidarity in Berlin. It was a wonderful time. We all know what came next, but for that shining moment it seemed like everything would be ok. That is my 9-11 memory.
For me, the attacks took place at night. I was living in Taibei at the time. A friend had flown in from Tokyo on a business trip with a colleague. A mutual friend and I were meeting them for dinner. We met up in the Taipei Hilton for dinner. We had a pleasant dinner, marked by good humor and a bit of politics. Then we headed to Ziga-Zaga, a bar within the hotel, for some drinks. The visitors headed up to their rooms to take a conference call. My friend returned and we started chatting again. A few minutes later, his colleague came down. He quietly observed that a plane had flown into a building in New York. The scene was surreal. People were drinking and chatting. A live band was playing. There were tvs hung behind the bar. I asked the bartender to change the channel to the BBC or CNN. He changed it to BBC. The first image we saw was a split screen. Both sides were a mass of smoke and dust. One side was labeled New York, the other Washington, D.C. I pointed at it to the guy next to me. He glanced up and went back to his conversation. We decided to retreat to one of the hotel rooms so we could hear the commentary.
When we got up there and settled in, the magnitude of what was happening set in. In fact, it seemed even worse. The first scene when we turned on CNN on was a plane hitting one of the towers. It must have been the second plane. Death tolls were projected at 10, 20, even 50 thousand. Luckily, this did not come to pass. But there was plenty of horror nonetheless. The scenes from the World Trade Center played over and over as relentless speculation about who, why, what went on. CNN was a babbling group of idiots. The BBC coverage was so much more adult.
We drank all night and lamented the end of life as we knew it. The next day, I went to work. There the tremendous outpouring of affection and sympathy began. To be an American overseas in the first weeks after 9-11 was to be the recipient of an amazing outpouring of compassion. It ended quickly enough, but I will never forget being hugged spontaneously by an Iranian friend who told me of demonstrations in Tehran demanding that if the Iranian government had anything to do with the attack that they resign. Or my German friend writing me to tell me that he went to a massive demonstration of solidarity in Berlin. It was a wonderful time. We all know what came next, but for that shining moment it seemed like everything would be ok. That is my 9-11 memory.
Thursday, September 07, 2006
Green? Green.
My friend Jim Green teased me about not posting anything new for a while. I blame moving, moving, and hell. But here's something that I wrote quite a while ago:
Hearing from the Florida Supreme Court about their heroes got me thinking about some of mine. Marc Bloch is one of my personal heroes. A Frenchman and fighter in the Resistance in World War II, Bloch was hardly an ordinary example of either. But, I believe that he would like to be described first and foremost that way. An academic, he was one of the most prominent members of the French Annales school of medieval history and a captain in the French Army. He was also a Jew and there is some evidence that he suffered discrimination in Dreyfus Affair era France. Yet Bloch never allowed this discrimination to diminish his patriotism for France. Part of the French Army during its disastrous defeat by the Nazis, Bloch observed first hand its failure to adapt to the challenges presented by the Nazi assault. When French positions were overrun, they followed a standard retreat and regroup protocol. But the protocol was not designed to take into account the then shocking speed of the Nazi blitzkrieg. So the French were never able to regroup. Instead of concentrating their efforts at one point against the Nazis, the French tried to defend every hamlet. Finally, the French were too slow to turn to unconventional warfare to defeat the Nazis. In his book Strange Defeat, written between 1941 and 1944, Bloch indicted all of these factors, but pointed to a more general problem. Problems in French society led to the defeat, principally a tendency to compartmentalize thought and avoid critical analysis. This failure of imagination, as much as any disparity in weapons and tactics, led to the French defeat. Modern America, if we are to take the notion seriously that we are in a bitter and intractable struggle against ruthless enemies, might take heed and pay a little more interest in knowing why they are our enemies. Bloch was apprehended and executed by the Nazis in 1944. His prescient warning lives on.
(The title is a play on the Fifth Element and the catchphrase by Chris Tucker's character.)
Hearing from the Florida Supreme Court about their heroes got me thinking about some of mine. Marc Bloch is one of my personal heroes. A Frenchman and fighter in the Resistance in World War II, Bloch was hardly an ordinary example of either. But, I believe that he would like to be described first and foremost that way. An academic, he was one of the most prominent members of the French Annales school of medieval history and a captain in the French Army. He was also a Jew and there is some evidence that he suffered discrimination in Dreyfus Affair era France. Yet Bloch never allowed this discrimination to diminish his patriotism for France. Part of the French Army during its disastrous defeat by the Nazis, Bloch observed first hand its failure to adapt to the challenges presented by the Nazi assault. When French positions were overrun, they followed a standard retreat and regroup protocol. But the protocol was not designed to take into account the then shocking speed of the Nazi blitzkrieg. So the French were never able to regroup. Instead of concentrating their efforts at one point against the Nazis, the French tried to defend every hamlet. Finally, the French were too slow to turn to unconventional warfare to defeat the Nazis. In his book Strange Defeat, written between 1941 and 1944, Bloch indicted all of these factors, but pointed to a more general problem. Problems in French society led to the defeat, principally a tendency to compartmentalize thought and avoid critical analysis. This failure of imagination, as much as any disparity in weapons and tactics, led to the French defeat. Modern America, if we are to take the notion seriously that we are in a bitter and intractable struggle against ruthless enemies, might take heed and pay a little more interest in knowing why they are our enemies. Bloch was apprehended and executed by the Nazis in 1944. His prescient warning lives on.
(The title is a play on the Fifth Element and the catchphrase by Chris Tucker's character.)
