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.
