I’ve just blogrolled Alex Halavais – for a couple of reasons. Firstly, he just went and whipped up a little script that scoops out the 8th-to-last sentences of blog posts, generating a collective stream of consciousness mimetic literature much like the wee bibliomancy craze of last week does. The results are intriguing and nifty. Secondly, he’s gone out and tried to aggregate the various lists of phd/academic bloggers that exist on various websites and blogs – the result is the publicly editable Scholars who Blog list.
In an unrelated epiphany, I realised that there has to be a word for the terrible feeling of discomfort I get when I realise that a third of my site visitors are search engine refugees who come here in the Googlejuice induced belief that I have some sort of insights to impart in the areas of postmodern architecture or swarm theory. The name for this uneasy feeling has to be… Googleguilt, does it not?
I’m wondering if experiencing guilt on this score is an academic thing – or is it just me? Any thoughts?
5 responses to “ScholarBlogs and GoogleGuilt”
thought no. 43-76328/x – I am trying to figure out if “blogroll” is a complimentary term or not 😉
thought no. 43-89461/b – I am wondering why such a fine blog can have a whole page with no comments.
thought no. 43-64742/y – I am considering suggesting you chuck in a blog entry or two along the lines of… say… Janet Jackson’s recent Superbowl “performance” – that way you will be guarranteed more comments.
thought no. 43-942645/m – I am thinking that your “Googleguilt” should not be taken personally – and that it could more accurately be described as “Google-lilt” – the phenomena where google actually fails to provide an accurate hit for your search criteria.
GoogleGuilt? Why should you feel guilty? Let others research where they want, engines work for some, not for others. Some find them useful for ideas, which you just may provide them with through your BLOG. And dont forget, this is a good thing 🙂
Renee, the guilt isn’t based on the idea of google as a research tool – it’s damn handy at times – but on the nightmarish though that some poor unsuspecting undergrad somewhere is using my midnight ramblings as information for a paper on modernism and postmodernism in architecture – a subject about which I know juuuuust about nothing. 😉
and blast, you’re right, it’s googlelilt (or tilt?) that causes the thing that causes the googleguilt.
genie,
A closer reading of the situation with respect to your reply to Renee’s comment – leads me to re-define the syndrome you have enunciated as – GOOGLE-JILT…
although as an abstract term – the “source” is undefined… which of course is to wonder who is actually getting jilted…
“poor unsuspecting undergrad (z) ” – ya just hope they look both ways when they cross the road…