Viva la rEVOLUTION!
Yep, the pixel is finally proving to be mightier than the crusty old journal… 8 Salman Rushdie (aka “Sir Ahmed”) and I have since become very good virtual pals – you see, I needed some advice on how to deal with the ivory tower fatwā that has been issued in my name. Actually, it’s quite cool having a price on my head – but, come on all you miserly dons - £1,999 is hardly worth getting out of bed for, these days!
Brad DeLong's Invisible College
Lindsay Marshall's Bifurcated Rivets
Jennifer Rohn's Mind the Gap
Dr Crazy's Reassigned Time 2.0 These tech-savvy EDUscholar bloggers just "get" that blogging gives them an opportunity to engage the public (remember what we said about "public service"), get speedy feedback on their work - and, enhance their academic reputations to boot! 8
All the fault of those bloody bloggers!8 What these chaps forget is this - criticism, in its purest sense, always had a "moral purpose" - to instruct, to guide and to shape. This is what Aristotle believed. There was no real "art" of criticism until people like IA Richards and other "Cambridge Johnnies" got hold of it and turned it into a "professional science", to be practiced only by those who had had sufficient "training" to do so - the "scholar". Literary Criticism thus became a "business" practiced by-initiates-for-initiates, with little connection to TEACHing and LEARNing (which, again, is what Aristotle believed that criticism should be - moral purpose). Bloggery...drags "criticism" kicking and screaming out of the ivory tower and takes it back to its roots - an opportunity for writers to educate, inform, and provoke readers - and hence promote LEARNing .... 8 Guys...
