

Wikibollocks: The Shirky Rules - razorburn
http://whimsley.typepad.com/whimsley/2010/04/wikibollocks-the-shirky-rules.html

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doron
I like Shirky's writing very much, he is fluent and brings great perspective
and ideas, not to mention great soundbites, but i will admit that the problems
presented in this counter article make sense.

It seems digital media analysis and the media studies derived from them share
this mild case of schizophrenia, or put another way a case of academic
attention deficit disorder, the nature of the commentary is similar to the
environment in which it is conceived.

I probably muddled what i was trying to say, but when you actually slog
through a scholarly work (of say historical analysis) that presents an
exhaustive attention to details, and reference you are struck by a wholly
different kind of academic style, one that seems increasingly old school and
unfashionable, which is very sad.

This mode still exist in the hard sciences, but in certain humanities it is
viewed with suspicion, even disdain, at least that is my anecdotal
observation.

It can be summed up as brilliant ideas, that fall apart due to lack of rigor
in research.

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Alex3917
"It seems digital media analysis and the media studies derived from them share
this mild case of schizophrenia"

Then again, the philosophy underpinning all of modern science was supposedly
delivered by an angel:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92pBIw0f_Og>

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ableal
Hmm, thanks. For those with no 'tube', I found a bit of text here:
<http://www.dedroidify.com/science.htm>

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tarkin2
Story-telling is what struck me (and what I liked) about the New York Times
and the New Yorker when I first started to read them, especially as I'm a
Briton and not use to that style.

Argument by analogue, and story-telling, reminds me of what I found unsettling
about freakanomics and gladwell's work. Not that I didn't enjoy those books, I
did. But I was oftentimes only left with the story.

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nollidge
I too immediately thought of Freakanomics and Malcolm Gladwell, as well as
Thomas Friedman. There seems to be a trend of writing books around "anecdata",
as the OP calls it - anecdotes presented as patterns, while failing to account
for selection bias in the process.

Of course, there's probably an irony in the fact that _I_ drew a trend from
merely four anecdotes as well...

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rgrieselhuber
I enjoyed this as both a critique of Shirky's writings (which I admittedly
enjoy) and as an excellent lesson in marketing.

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RyanMcGreal
>analysts Visible Measures add in all copies of a video together with spoofs
and pastiches, and their list of the top fifteen videos is as follows

I disagree with the reasoning that "spoofs and pastiches" belong to the
"complex business model" set of videos and not the "creative amateur" set.

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revorad
Very well-written critique. But I wish people stopped putting giant
disclaimers on their blog titles such as:

 _Occasional badly-informed opinions, worth exactly what you pay for them.
Mostly technology and politics with a pseudo-philosophical twist._

Is that meant to be funny or protect the author from criticism?

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inerte
You're asking if we like him or hate him :)

Because a friend would say he's humble and funny, and an enemy would say he's
deceptive and ignorant.

Then again, I don't personally know him...

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RyanMcGreal
If you haven't read it, I do highly recommend Tainter's _The Collapse of
Complex Societies_ as a worthy attempt to quantify the process of collapse as
a function of diminishing returns on added complexity.

I recall it being damned expensive to buy, but you should be able to borrow it
from a well-appointed library.

