La vie virtuelle
July 26, 2009
I’ve just had a wake-up call from reality. I hate those things, they always mean that I’m going to have to do something I don’t like.
Recap: I applied and was offered a place to attempt my PhD at the other end of the country. I recently went there for the first time. Lovely place, pleasant town, college was a bit run down but they are getting a new one soon.
But it felt wrong. I couldn’t really put my finger on it.
Was it the interactions that I had with people while I was there ? On the whole they weren’t unpleasant, probably not the most helpful folks I’ve every met in the service sector, but honest. They seemed OK online.
Was it physical isolation ? OK it was a long drive from here to there, but here is more isolated than there.
Maybe it was just the weather and sleep deprivation due to heavy rain on canvas.
It was a long drive home, so I thought about it quite deeply (but not to distraction). I think that the place wasn’t sufficiently different to where I was coming from. The physical balance was different with more focus on land and less on sea, but essentially the elements are the same. Even the economies of the areas are similar – mining, farming & tourism. Again, a different balance but the same elements.
And I wondered about how that sort of ambient situational noise would translate into online communities or even if it is relevant since the sense of physical ‘place’ online has no direct analogy. In a way this is what my PhD was supposed to be about – the translation effects between online & offline versions of reality. What do people say when the world is looking over their shoulders vs what do people do in the privacy of their own lives ?
Update – has ‘place’ been replaced by ‘community’ online ? If so, perceiving community is not dependent on any physical parameter, apart from access to the net. What does that mean in terms of nation and of national politics ? If our community only lies in virtual space do we pledge allegiance to the physical embodiment of the virtual space and form our own armies to protect server farms ? Do we take responsibility for that virtual community and its real-world impacts or is there something inherently different about a non-corporeal community ? Does its basis in the commercial world mean that an online community can be expected to persist in the same way as a physical one ? What happens when Facespace goes bust ? Is it the same as a nation going into political turmoil ? Are there online refugees ?
Yes, lots to explore over the next few years. Check out the new report on the Internet and Civic Engagement from the Pew Internet Project. Interesting stuff, but a bit cart before the horse. I think that we need to address some of the deeper questions about how people engage with each other before we start to act on this sort of data.
What does it take to lead academic research ?
July 7, 2009
I’ve been fortunate enough to be in meetings with two of the directors of the UK’s scientific research councils recently and I was struck by some commonalities. I’d like to discuss one of them.
Generous skepticism
These were men (yes, both men) with powerful intellects, but who were willing to entertain thoughts from other perspectives. You might think that this goes without saying, they do after all have to be able to see merit in other’s work, even if they cannot see the explicit route to ‘success’. Success in the charter of both organisations includes economic impact, as well as scientific advance and the public good.
The reason why I bring this up is because I have a work history in business and am moving into academia for the next few years, and the leadership approaches are completely different. While there is talk of ‘the business case’ within academic circles what is actually being spoken of is how likely the research is to attract funding. ‘Sexy’ or timely topics are viewed by most academics, that I have met, with as much relish as the truly original mode of thought.
I’m not sure how I feel about that. I rather like the image of the tousle-haired professor, forgetting the world and engaging in a flight of fancy, before plunging back to earth with a new way to think that happens to be of great use in addressing issues in bus timetabling. All because they saw the way that raindrops fell on a window pane and decided to chase that thought.
Of course, in practical terms research is a collaborative effort with individual scientific endeavour accreting to the edge of the shell of knowledge, but I don’t think that the spawning of new fields of endevour should be ignored and this is where the generous skepticism comes in. As leaders with a remarkable degree of control over what research gets done and by whom, the directors of the UK research councils must, absolutely must, be able to detach their own views on what is an immediately valid topic for funding from what might be a promising avenue of interrogation. In other words, not be seduced by the apposite, but be able to think in a strategic manner even if the outcome is not defined. I was glad to see some of that quality in both men.
