These may be pretty random, in the "brain droppings" format:
1. Iterations, discrete sequential moments in time, and social epistemology. I don't have anything coherent to say about this yet, but I think there's something there, which Yudkowsky hints at with his Eliezer-subscript1997, etc. representing his state of knowledge and mind at different points of time. Even now within the epistemological blogosphere we see it: Mankiw shares information or has an epiphany, Krugman reacts on it, Cowen reacts on it, DeLong reacts on it, etc. There's an element of social performance (to use the analytical frame of Goffman), there's an element of relatively raw cognition, but the iterative, sequential element of this social production of knowledge lacks a meta-awareness/transparency that I'm trying to reach for here.
2. The social epistemology of the blogging. I haven't seen that as a journal title but if it's not out there, it should be soon. What's great about blogs, message boards, and comments is that there's an easily accessible record.
3. I surprised there are serious researchers and theorists of any stripe that aren't blogging daily. There's a field of cohort experts and outside experts that's most easily accessible by making your daily musings globally accessible. Also, I don't get the reluctance to make it very easy to comment on one's blogging. It just makes it harder for you as an individual to capture useful ideas and insights. I suspect there's significant free-riding by closed bloggers (andrew sullivan, mankiw) off of the comment-capture of open bloggers (yglesias, cowen).
Your point 1 reminds me of the "classic rhetorical style" Robin wrote about. I think the iterative nature of it undermines the classical sensibility.
On #3: Maybe they have really low regard for people on the internet and figure anyone worth talking to will just publish in the journals. Or they might want to spend their off-time doing other stuff.
Posted by: TGGP | March 11, 2009 at 09:10 PM