Blogs and Scholarship
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David Alan Black:
Occasionally I'll hear some slighting remarks about "all those blogs out there that are ruining the church." I'm amazed that anyone could have such a negative attitude toward blogging or websites in this age of cybernetics. Let me put it this way: If I publish a book it may take 5 years for 10,000 people to read it. But if I publish an essay on my website it may take a week for the same number of people to read it. And these people live in India, Ukraine, Brazil, all over the world in fact. Get the picture? And all of this for only 10 measly bucks a month. The Internet is such an incredibly effective tool for publishing that I am shocked at how few are using it effectively. My advice to you if you are a fledging scholar is to start a blog, publish it regularly (constant updating and good content are the two keys to any successful blog), and watch what it will do for your writing skills as you begin that first book project. And if I can give you any advice along way don't hesitate to contact me. I am happy to "shepherd" my web audience as well.HT: Michael Bird
posted by JT at Tuesday, August 21, 2007
6 Comments:
Reformed blogs have been a source of mentorship and discipleship for me, in times when these resources were missing in the local church. They've also gone a long way in providing suggestions on good and right books to read.
Besides, crazies have been on the internet long before Christian Bloggers got started. You have to be discerning no matter what, whether you're looking for spiritual insight or home improvement tips.
-Jane
Wouldn't one wish to chasten his affinity for blogs, alloying it with a bit technologically skepticism? I'm no Luddite--no need to be--but is the promise of spreading information through blogs greater than that through books or pre-blog forms? I don't know for sure, but I think not. I imagine, though I don't know personally, that a Christian must put a great deal of time to create a quality blog, a deal of time which few seem persuaded is needed to do quality blogging. It's not easy to diligently study, to work hard in scrutinizing old ideas so as to be insightful about currently new ones, to carefully guard against the trivializing effects built into computer technology. No one but Christians have this concern, though, for all other topics in light of God are infinitely trivial and so perfectly suited for blogging. So Christian scholars wishing to blog will have to work all the more diligently to overcome obstacles over which no one else need prevail. Will all who hear Dr. Black's advice note and commit to such a burden, if I've accurately (if not briefly) expressed it? I know myself best: if I were to blog, I can see the quickness of blogging easily mitigating the already weak will in me to diligently study anything, much less the word of God and these thereon. To write a quality book, on the other hand, which I've not done either, goes slower and indeed requires the very things that blogs do not--diligence, study, gravity. I think it may be technologically naive to think that, whether reading it or writing it, online scholarship in blog form (or even digitized journals) is the same thing, much less affects readers the same way. How great Dr. Black's encouragement to reach the globe with quality scholarship and top-notch news of the great word of Chirst! And how fortuitous the previous post on McLuhan (despite the salient differences between his faithful and ours) which, when mixed with strong evangelical desires, might chasten the ruinous speed with which many Christians run to blogs (and which Dr. Black referenced) and so might result in both a quality and quantity of Christian scholarship which glorifies God around the world.
This is a great, encouraging quote. Thanks for posting it.
Danny
That said, what is lacking with blogs and the internet is peer review in a technical sense. But I don't think that should breed fear of the vox populi.
The urge to update constantly does not fall on writers of books in the same way, but is inherent to bringing webites back to a blog. I appreciate constant updates and check my fav blogs regularly, but one could imagine a scenario where the urgent/constant undermines the quality?
Derek
St. John's
A dissenting opinion from the Wall Street Journal:
www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110009409
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