Technovana

Anyone who majors in the humanities has had to endure a version of that question more than once. As I went through graduate school, people asked the question less and less. By the time I was teaching classes, I had a pretty ready answer (teaching is paying work, you know?). As a professor, the question answers itself. Of course, being a philosophy professor is not for everybody. The crowded academic job market alone is enough to dissuade the faint of heart. The work is demanding, involving wearing the hats of instructor, researcher, and administrator. To succeed, one has to be flexible, creative, think on one's feet, and be ready to ask hard questions of oneself and of others. As academic institutions rely on more part-time and temporary staff, success often translates into more work without longer-term commitment from the organization. One can invest a whole lot of time and energy without knowing whether that organization will continue to provide support. Living the life of a ...

There are no good writing days or bad writing days. There are only days where there is writing and days where there is no writing. Recently, my main professional ambition is to minimize the latter, preferably limiting them to weekends and the occasional holiday. The imperative originated in a concern to pick up the pace on my research and to meet a submission deadline on a promising call for papers. I'm glad to say that I made the deadline and decided to use the momentum to send out some projects that have been lying fallow for a couple of months. I went from having nothing significant in submission to having three articles in submission in the course of four days. Three submissions, four days. Beyond those submissions, I started on another three projects, some now in draft, some still in extended abstract. Now that I have the back-burner projects out of the way, I can start some revision and further research on the current projects, and hopefully get those off sometime soon as w...

Over the last year, my professional life has undergone a number of major changes. Obviously, moving to the Netherlands is on the list, but I have in mind more differences in how I view myself and my work. While finishing my dissertation gave me a sense of completion, it took a while to find a well-developed sense of myself as a philosopher. In particular, I have a very different relationship to my research today than I had when I defended my dissertation. The dissertation stage is filled with lots of uncertainties and fear along with the other challenges of actually writing the thing. For one thing, I had never written anything that long or unified. I had to design and execute a book-length argument on one topic, and I had to say something relatively novel. Thankfully, my supervisor Bruce Brower was an excellent mentor. He helped me identify the topic very early in my doctoral studies, so I spent two years or so thinking about it before I began principal writing. We worked the topic ...

I put what might be too much thought into presentation when I teach. I say it's too much because I don't know how much of it comes across to my students, but insofar as a teacher must entertain, it seems appropriate to work on one's showmanship. Over time, I've developed some particular aesthetics of teaching that both keep me motivated and focused in the task, and hopefully contribute something unique to my students' experience. My basic model is jazz improvisation, for reasons perhaps best understood by fellow initiates of Robert Anton Wilson. The presentation slides give me an overall structure and contain the essential information. For the most part, the slides are supposed to be springboards for verbal improvisation. I like the idea of running discussion sessions, and when it happens I enjoy it, but I find it hard to get the students going. In introductory ethics courses, when I include assignments that require them to read before coming to class, it's ea...

Everyone who works in education is trying to figure out what to do with the new capabilities afforded by IT. The most prominent example is the move toward MOOCs, the massively-open online courses made visible by the efforts of EdX, Coursera, and associated institutional partners. For those of us in the trenches, MOOCs represent the least imaginative application of information tech to the classical challenge of enlightening young minds. Think about it this way: you have any and all documented facts at your fingertips, and the ability to connect with experts anywhere in the world, and you use it to turn university lectures into a Netflix product? Michael Sandel is a talented lecturer, but I don't see philosophers binging on his Justice course the way we all do with Orange is the New Black . So, if MOOCs aren't the big challenge, what is? As far as I can tell, educators (self included) have the most trouble coping with the "flipped classroom." A "flipped classroom...

I just returned from a trip to Washington, DC where I spent a few days attending events and networking with various think tanks and advocacy organizations. Having spent the last few years doing academic work in political theory and intellectual property, learning about the policy work that happens closer to the sphere of praxis than theory has been eye-opening. My motivations for working on political philosophy included finding ways to make actual change in the world, and I have at times found myself frustrated with the isolation of the academic environment. Going to DC, I learned that the isolation problem works both ways. While it's difficult to get politicians and policy-makers to hear academic arguments, I've found myself that academics are not always interested in the application of their theories. Since my work contains specific and substantial discussions of how theory should shape practice, I've gotten a bit of pushback. I've heard similar stories from other a...

Today I got a job-related rejection letter, delivered enmass to 151 candidates. I know it was 151 because the sender hit CC rather than BCC, so all of the recipients know. Furthermore, all of the recipients know who else was competing for the job, can look at their department profiles, and likely their CVs. For private individuals, academics tend to have a lot of Web presence, largely due to university/department websites. To a large extent, that's a good thing, but when combined with a leak like this one, that increased Web presence costs a good bit more privacy. Now, there are 151 candidates who get to take a peek at their competition, maybe stalk them on "the Facebook," maybe judge themselves and each other more harshly for it. At the same time, it is not unusual for departments to announce their new hires, so everyone also knows who got the job, enabling further judgement/comparison/stalking. Situations like this really highlight how many informational trac...

I'm assuming everyone is at least passingly familiar with various swap meet/stuff exchange websites or communities. The idea is simple: you have something you don't want or need, so you offer it to a community of other folks who might actually need or want it. This is an example of the kind of thing I mean: http://www.paperbackswap.com/index.php I propose forming such a community for graduate students, postdocs, and tenure-track academics, those of us whose careers depend on our research and access to research, but who are not so financially secure that we can devote $1,000 of our yearly income to books. Our university libraries are often excellent for getting journal articles, but book-length works can be an issue. Recalling a checked-out book can still mean a wait of a few weeks (or longer, depending on who has checked out the book). A successful recall can end in yet another recall, as the original party wants the book once again. Interlibrary loan can provide...