Monday, August 15, 2005

This is the point which those who blog much hold to in order to encourage accuracy of their work. ThThe point of blogging ethos and accuracy

This is the point which those who blog much hold to in order to encourage accuracy of their work. This is how the blog becomes defensible and how it can have integrity. This is how the wealth of humankind's knowledge and understanding is added to.

Another way to accomplish this is to write in a very straightforward way, such that people can follow your argument simply, particularly if you are writing philosophical text(s).

BBC NEWS | Technology | Berners-Lee on the read/write web:

"You see out there right now, for example, when you look at bloggers some of them are very careful. A good blogger when he says that something's happened will have a point to back, and there's a certain ethos within the blogging community, you always point to your source, you point all the way back to the original article. If you're looking at something and you don't know where it comes from, if there's no pointer to the source, you can ignore it."

The reader much have the ability and accept responsibility for being a discerning reader, one who is able to deconstruct an argument down to it's core principles and see if any of the viewed house of cards is built on a flimsy base. I recently discussed some world issues with a "Pol-Sci" graduate, who only trotted out some broad opinions which had been bandied about the news. She had no defence when I pointed out the facts which made those opinions unfounded. She hadn't examined her own views for support.

All of this finally gets to the obscene obfuscations which "English" classes have taken this to. Mostly they have reclassified basic logical thought and argumentation into nomenclature which only they really can understand, so poorly communicate this form to their students. I took a class on Exposition (required) which turned out to be one on Rhetoric and Debate. However, the forms and so on which they were using made little sense according to the book. The authors of the book and the teacher did have a point - which was to support your argument with facts, with trustworthy sources.

How they suggested you do that was well beyond the scope of the course, since they were trying to get a world of experience into one thin volume which they then were trying to teach in 6 three-hour classes. This is more the problem with college - something which can be solved with teaching how to think accurately instead of a bulk of data to be swallowed - that they consider themselves to be the end all of training and education instead of simply a resource to find other data and to develop a world view ruleset which functions for that individual, while enabling that student to function as an operating cog in societies various machines.

The Web is fast becoming a way to get a real education in this world. College is just a secondary education source, some way to polish up the work elementary and high schools had started. The web is where one can retrain in a matter of months or years, regardless of earlier training in any subject or grounding/lack of it. Those colleges which don't absorb and migrate to this Web are becoming quickly irrelevant.

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