Re: Two things your grandchildren will never read: Newspapers, and "Proceedings"

[Robert Lemos <lists () robertlemos com>]

On Aug 10, 2009, at 11:29 PM, dave wrote:

> * PGP Signed by an unknown key
>
> It's when you need sleep the most that you can't sleep. But the
> following twitter does make it worth it:
>
> spendergrsec: "It's like 8 pages documenting a team of 6 people's  
> first
> exploit": http://bit.ly/grcUz
>
> Go read and enjoy.
>
> There's many institutions the Internet is going to destroy. Of all of
> them, perhaps Academia is going the quietest. Every time someone posts
> about the "Proceedings" of something, or a "peer reviewed journal" or
> posts a bibliography of a paper-bound book, it's like hearing the
> rasping sighs of the last dieing brontosaurus.

Them's fighting words, Dave.

I agree that neither will continue to exist in their current forms,  
but I would also argue that both are trying to bring some level of  
authentication/trust to the reporting of research -- a feature of peer  
review and newspapers that should survive, even when the monopoly does  
not. (In our own industry, Full-Disclosure versus Bugtraq is a good  
example of the options.) So I hope the end result is that we get the  
benefits of peer review without the drawbacks of monopoly (although,  
one could argue that peer review is inherently a monopoly-creating  
activity).

There was an interesting interview on future of newspapers recently  
that covered some of this. I blogged about it yesterday: 
http://robertlemos.typepad.com/writingmachines/2009/08/journalism-is-an-artifact-of-the-printingpress-monopoly.html

Cheers,

-R

robert lemos | mail () robertlemos com | skype: rob.lemos
science & technology journalist | http://www.robertlemos.com








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