Blogs in research: help for a speech

I only monitor 280 blogs, so I can't judge the totality of the blogosphere, but blogs seem more focused on promotion, debating, announcements, and distribution than true collaborative research. I haven't seen much in the was of people actually "doing science" in blog format. Hard-core researchers are most likely doing their research-oriented communication that same ways as they were a few years ago before blogs took off.

My main research interest is software agent technology. There are plenty of conferences, publications, web sites, email lists discussion forums, and e-papers floating around, but very little in the way of active blogs.

Direct email and email "lists" and e-papers on web sites are probably still the main electronic research communication tools.

Yahoo-style discussion forums are good tools for collaborative work. Blogs are not as developed for repid-fire multi-path communication as discussion forums.

Wikis are coming along, but I haven't heard or seen many examples of their use that compares to posting papers on web sites and emailing discussion. Hard-core researchers will probably continue to foccus on refined PDF papers, with second-tier players massaging the refined results to make them more palatable for general consumption in wiki format.

-- Jack Krupansky

Blogs are finally breaking down the "silos" of relationships and information that have kepts academics, bureaucrats and other experts within their own vertical communities. When I started using email back in the early 90s, the Internet was solely a gov't/academic research tool. You had to know -- be told by someone else -- where to find documents to download by ftp, and how to find other professionals using Usenet lists. It was all very personal, and the advantage was still with the people who held the knowledge.

The pre-Web Gopher system started to break down the silos, by making it possible to find documents packed away in Gopher folders. First the Web with its search engines, and now blogging, with its unhierarchical, seemingly anarchic sharing of info and links -- blurring professional and private lives and interests -- are, I think proving to be a new amazing engine of innovation.

On my own personal blog, Zap*Germs, I discuss medical matters as an interested layperson. But I am in contact (through the blog itself, but also wthrough emails from visitors) with medical people, corporate people, other bloggers, and regular folks -- all because they've found my blog posts via search engines or links on other blogs.

The URL I've given you points to a post I did that involves nanotechnology in food packaging. At one time, that info would've been held within the research and the food-industry silos. Now, however, I've found it on the Web through my own following of links & RSS feeds, and have shared it with all sorts of people who may check my blog.

When just about everyone with something of interest to say has, and knows how to use, a blog, both relationships and innovation will really take off. No one really knows where it will lead, of course, but the traditional media world has been collapsing ever since intelligent bloggers began poking the NY Times for its biased coverage and coverup of the Jayson Blair fiasco. The Dan Rather/60 Minutes mess really blew the lid off things, and now no one in public life can ignore the power of the blogosphere to promote or destroy an idea.

Yes to your question, "...can blogs help create the links between these various disciplines". We provide an enterprise blogging system (a href="http://www.advancinginsights.com/mybiz/?q=summary_of_site"> - Ideascape - that delivers on open innovation, improving productivity, morale, and getting people to work together across boundaries. Corp IQ increases almost exponentially when blogs are tied together, share a common repository, and reach outside the business to services like technorati, delicious, et al.

Is the question "are blogs...?" or "will blogs...?"

I mean, we can try to find examples of blogs being used as collaborative tools, or we can explain how they can theoretically be used in this manner.

Pioneers don't look around for trends to exploit. They create their own trends.

When Alexander Graham Bell thought that telephones would be used for symphony broadcasts and news updates delivered to homes, he was thinking of the internet, but had only invented the phone, by which many connect to the internet via dial up connections.

In other words: I'm amused by business and science figures acting puzzled about blogs.

Don't ask "how can I use a blog?" Blogs are free, or cheap, and very easy to use and to modify for specific purposes.

I say: jump in and experiment. You have nothing to lose.

Turn the tide of discussion away from "how do others do it?" and move it toward "imagine how you could do it!"

For my masterthesis I am trying a same thing. I am writing on how the documentary cinema in The Netherlands is forced into a set of rules, which are created by our culture of broadcasters and subsidaries.

With my blog I hope that "the field" will post on the subject. So far I got zero comments...

ps The blog is in Dutch and the design still sucks, currently my focus is on content :)