Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 38, No. 126.
Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
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Date: 2024-09-02 05:00:42+00:00
From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
Subject: e-mail and self-defence?
Early in 1992, I've recently learned, I remarked to a friend that we had
about 5 years left before the commercial sector moved into online
communications and took over. If memory serves, in the latter half of
the 90s, university administrative staff discovered e-mail and began
pelting academic staff with e-mail enquiries, reminders and so on. As
their familiarity with e-mail increased, the volume of this pelting
declined. A halcyon period followed. Slowly but relentlessly, however,
the model of university-as-business seeped in. At some point--here
follows a question--academics began backing away from e-mail during
weekends. As one who has only ever marginally made a distinction between
weekdays and weekends, the idea that one turns off academic activity at
'the weekend' seems odd, but then perhaps I'm the odd factor. Anyhow, my
question: are those who do make this distinction, as I suspect, acting
in self-defense against the erosion of scholarship by tick-box duties?
I'm also witnessing what I suspect are effects on scholarship,
principally the phenomenon of the aggressively thorough bullet-proof
academic paper which takes no risks. Is this something I am imagining? A
pity, when there's so much adventure to be had with what can be found
online.
Yours,
WM
--
Willard McCarty,
Professor emeritus, King's College London;
Editor, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews; Humanist
www.mccarty.org.uk
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