As “Kieran noted yesterday”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/002007.html I’ve been gallavanting around the world (most recently into St Andrews) so I haven’t had time to promote the latest round of philosophy blogs. Actually there have been two big group blogs launched since the Arizona blog Kieran linked to. I was going to try and make a systematic list, but that’s hard work away from one’s home computer, so I’ll just link to David Chalmers’s very good “list of philosophy blogs”:http://jamaica.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/weblogs.html instead.
Unlike CT, most of these blogs are geographically based. The contributors to group blogs are usually from the same time zone, and frequently from the same zip code. I prefer CT’s cosmopolitan flavour, but that isn’t looking like becoming the dominant form of blogging. That’s a pity, because the real attraction of the medium, to me anyway, is that it helps overcome the tyrannies of distance. Hopefully active comment boards and crosslinks can do that even if the blogs themselves are spatially centralised.
{ 11 comments }
Kieran Healy 06.11.04 at 1:29 pm
Man are we ever cosmopolitan. I bet if you got us all together in a room and took a photo of us variously sitting on chairs, lying on the ground, staring off into the distance, etc, Vanity Fair could run it as the cover of its “Cosmopolitan People of the Year” issue.
Brian Weatherson 06.11.04 at 2:06 pm
It was meant to be a comparative. Compared to the collected philosophy faculty at some of the university’s that now run philosophy blogs, we look pretty good candidates for Vanity Fair covers?! I mean, if they can run David Beckham on the cover, why not CT ;)
Claire 06.11.04 at 3:31 pm
I’m trying to set up a world spanning early modernist group blog. So CT does have some disciples.
eszter 06.11.04 at 3:34 pm
Brian – I agree with you that it’s great to have people from all over. I also see the upside of a blog for people in physical proximity though. It seems that colleagues in a dept can travel so much and be so busy with various tasks locally that just because people are in the same dept doesn’t matter they’re necessarily always close by to have interesting conversations. Plus this way, we can listen in on their conversations.:)
Kieran – I picture half of us asleep on such a picture due to jetlag.
As for CT, I would like to think one additional upside is that we have a more diverse group of disciplines represented, but I realize some may see that as a downside.;-)
q 06.11.04 at 3:45 pm
What countries/states are represented by this blog?
Chris Bertram 06.11.04 at 4:01 pm
Taking account both residence and nationality, at least
The US, the UK, Ireland, France, Hungary, Australia, Singapore…
Chris Bertram 06.11.04 at 4:03 pm
…and Canada (when Henry is based in Toronto).
Maria 06.11.04 at 4:03 pm
Q, it depends on which way you cut it. CT has no less than three Irish bloggers, but none of us actually lives in Ireland; Henry’s N. America, Kieran’s in Australia and I’m in France. We’ve a clatter of Americans (not all of whom live in the US), a sprinkling of Brits, and an Australian who lives there and has the passport to match.
Aside from the mix of backgrounds and country perspectives, one real plus of CT is that having contributors in so many time zones so the site’s never quiet for too long. So if only I could get around to holding up my end, the essential GMT +1 demographic would be better represented…
des von bladet 06.11.04 at 4:16 pm
Maria, GMT is UTC nowadays, and France is of course UTC+2 in summer, when the appalling BST is inflicted on the UK.
Sadly, these farcical timezone jiggery pokeries are now synchronised within the EU, so there’s little hope of joining plucky little Iceland on year round UTC.
Ophelia Benson 06.11.04 at 7:23 pm
I like the globe-dotting thing too. B&W is only two people, and also not a blog (it contains a blog, as opposed to being one), but we’re in admirably different time zones. At B&W right now it is both 11:22 in the morning and 7:22 in the evening. Is that cosmopolitan or what.
John Quiggin 06.12.04 at 2:54 am
Taking the point a bit further, my longest-standing and most productive academic collaboration is with Bob Chambers of Uni of MD – our locations are just about antipodal. There’s nothing better than waking up in the morning and discovering that a problem you’ve been struggling with has been fixed by the night shift while you slept.
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