Wednesday, March 05, 2003

Academic writing at its worst Every year, the scholarly journal Philosophy and Literature, based in New Zealand, holds an international Bad Writing Contest. Its aim? To ridicule the worst excesses of academic writing. Entries must be real examples from academic books and journals. The judges recently announced their prizes for 1998. And the results are as funny as they are lamentable. The winner was Judith Butler, a professor of rhetoric and comparative literature at the University of California at Berkeley, whose [sic!] been described as "one of the 10 smartest people on the planet." Here's her "prize-winning" sentence, from an article published in the scholarly journal Diacritics: "The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relationships in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power." Which means, I guess, that class systems are based, not just on money, but on differences in political power and social status. Since I'm not one of the 10 smartest people on the planet, I'm not sure. Thank God they did not find some of my stuff 10:10:46 PM    comment []

The Atlas of Cyber Space Utterly Brilliant site - Weeks of Value - Shows the many ways that Cyberspace can be mapped and visualized 10:26:08 AM    comment []

What is Wiki? I am struggling to understand better. Here is a useful page. As I understand it, Wiki is a group editor with a "Darwinian" power - crap will be edited out. Am I close? Is this what Socialtext is about? Ross if you see this I could do with some help - Rob 7:46:41 AM    comment []

A Gold Mine - See the example page on quitting smoking - Best health site I have found - Good tools plus community. There is so much ribbish about web sites - this is a gem! Captology, persuasive technologies and web credibility. Last couple of days almost everyone points to Persuasive Design: New Captology Book. It's not common for Jakob Nielsen to focus his Alertbox column describing work of others so positiely :) So, the gem: It is a rare book that defines a new discipline or fundamentally changes how we think about technology and our jobs. Dr. B.J. Fogg's new book, Sam Adkins in Learning Circuits Blog points to the follow-up reading: www.captology.org with key concepts, examples, relevant groups, collaboration suggestions, events and newsletter. Good read before you can grad the book. Between other links this site points to Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility (these guidelines are referred in the Alertbox column; references to supporting research are included). Make it easy to verify the accuracy of the information on your site. Show that there's a real organization behind your site. Highlight the expertise in your organization and in the content and services you provide. Show that honest and trustworthy people stand behind your site. Make it easy to contact you. Design your site so it looks professional (or is appropriate for your purpose). Make your site easy to use -- and useful.Update your site's content often (at least show it's been reviewed recently). Update your site's content often (at least show it's been reviewed recently). Use restraint with any promotional content (e.g., ads, offers). Avoid errors of all types, no matter how small they seem. [Mathemagenic] 7:34:31 AM    comment []