Over the past few days I’ve been writing several longish papers for class. After a year in the church in Scotland, for a change it’s actually nice to think of a narrow thesis and carefully argued paper. I tend to over-research for papers, as I was reminded yesterday when I checked out 10 books for a 4-5 pager. But writing papers this year with the blog in the back of my mind, I’ve been struck with how blogging is very similar to the work of the academy. In fact, it’s the work of the academy in super-speed.

So this week for my post-exilic class, we read an article with millions of footnotes that was basically two Old Testament profs arguing over back and forth over some essentials of reading Nehemiah. I won’t bore you with the details, but what struck me is how long such arguments take. Say one of them publishes something in 2000, which took her a year to research and write. Then another prof gets around to reading it in 2001, considers replying, and does so during a 2002 sabbatical. This article is submitted to journals, and eventually accepted for publishing late in 2003–if she’s lucky. So for one back-and-forth to occur it could take four+ years.

And I was thinking that footnotes function in lots of ways like links in blogs. Both show where one got one’s idea and where to go for more info.

The advantage of blog posts rather than academic articles, however, is that they are available to more people. Such arguments are instantly public, and allow for instant commenting. Sure, this comes with its disadvantages–sometimes reasoned thought takes a while–but it’s an open dialog. Academic journal articles take forever to publish, and, eh-hem, how many people are actually involved in the discussion? But I get a ton of hits to my blog from random google searches, or from other blogs, or mistaken searches for the wrestler Adam Copeland, folks who end up jumping in on conversations new to them. Blogs are the academic journals for the masses.

Another advantage? Blogs offer great procrastination options while writing papers, and the possibility of writing crappy posts like this.

image by lusi

UPDATE: Tony Jones musings in related matters here.