I recently came across a very interesting new blog: Gideon Burton's Academic Evolution (tag line: "the order is changing, the change needs order") about the impact of Web 2.0 and associated developments on academia. Burton, a professor at Brigham Young University, has maintained a more general blog since late 2007, but created a breakaway blog in the hopes of emulating Chris Anderson (of "The Long Tail" and Wired fame) by writing a book via a blog.
Anyway, check out the blog -- it's certainly worth a read. Relatedly... Nature has an editorial out questioning the use of metric-based research assessment.
On the topic of "changing the order" - the changes that technology brought about should be accompanied by changes to the behaviour of people. An example: abandonment of ethical values by cell phone users (see my latest posting).
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