... but maybe the blogging is too much.

Brian Leiter provides an excerpt from an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education about the effect the internet might be having on scholarship in universities.

Short story: maybe not a wholly positive effect.

Here's an excerpt of the excerpt:

David M. Levy, [computer scientist and professor at University of Washington, says] "We're losing touch with the contemplative roots of scholarship, the reflective dimension ... When you think that universities are meant to be in effect the think tanks for the culture, or at least one of the major forms of thinking, that strikes me as a very serious concern."

I am so there. Too much information coupled with too little original thought or analysis and you've got squat. (This is why I actually discourage additional research on certain of the assignments I give.) You have to figure out what's important and then set the other stuff aside. You have to trust your gut on that decision, else you spend all your time combing the mountain of information for the best set of standards for distinguishing the important stuff from the other stuff.

On the other hand, some of us really have an easier time with the contemplation and reflection if we've got others we can bounce ideas off of. The emails and the weblogs and such can actually help with that.

Just one more mean to try to achieve, I guess.