The digital underground

A very interesting conversation between two Big 10 professors, but I'm most interested in the 10 minutes or so they talk about blogging. I consider academia a conservative community, in the sense that change is glacial. Professors who blog--under their own name--have a certain cache with their students and their peers, but a lot of difficulty explaining just why they enjoy doing it among some of the old guard.

I wish I could say it was different, but in an atmosphere where tenure-track professors are follow a very choreographed and careful path to tenure, I can't see professors embracing the idea of blogging specifically because they have to very guarded in what they say and what opinions they want to share. Which really defeats the purpose of what a blog is all about.

This type of personal branding--let's face it, that's what blogging is, in a bigger sense--is the antithesis to what (younger) professors are expected to do. And that's a shame, because they have incredibly wonderful perspectives to contribute.