Cutting NSF Is Like Liquidating Your Finest Investment
Look closely at your mobile phone or tablet. Touch-screen technology, speech recognition, digital sound recording and the internet were all developed using […]
AI May Usurp the Market in Guiding Public Policy Decisions
Most institutions see the market as the only legitimate form of organization, but different visions towards public policy, some involving artificial intelligence, have been the subject of consideration from academics and politicians alike. Under what circumstances, and to what extent, could artificial intelligence replace the market as the end-all guiding force in crafting reasonable public policy? Brexit may play a leading role in the transition.
In Praise of Becoming a ‘Slow Professor’
After a friend gave the reviewer a copy of ‘The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy’ by Maggie Berg and Barbara K. Seeber, it gave him lots of food for thought: Working at a university, after several years of postdoctoral fellowships, why, indeed, not slow down?
Setting the Norms of Internet-based Survey Research
A decade ago, Elizabeth Buchanan and Erin Hvizdak set forth, in the Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics, some of the key elements that have since guided guiding ethical academic use of internet research methods.
Harvey Whitehouse on Rituals
One of the most salient aspects of what generally makes a ritual a ritual is that the action itself is divorced from real life or its real life roots – and that fascinates anthropologist Harvey Whitehouse. By his own admission, what intrigues the latest guest in the Social Science Bites podcast series is that ritual is “behavior that is ‘causally opaque.’
Chronicler of a Generation’s Spirituality: Wade Clark Roof, 1949-2019
Wade Clark Roof, a sociologist of religion whose work examined the evolving spirituality of the Baby Boomer generation in such words as A Generation of Seekers, has died.
Social Precognition and Sociology: The Case of Resistentialism and ANT
In the last 20 years or so there has been much excitement, particularly in science and technology studies, about Actor-Network Theory. One of its most distinctive features is the way in which it ascribes agency to material objects. Perhaps we should not be crediting Bruno Latour or Michel Callon with the original insight – but an English humourist, Paul Jennings.
How Archival Research Morphs in the Digital Age
Today, and into the future, consulting archival documents increasingly means reading them on a screen. This brings with it opportunity — imagine being able to search for keywords across millions of documents, leading to radically faster search times — but also challenge, as the number of electronic documents increases exponentially.
Are Practitioner-Researcher Conversations Enjoyable?
The last in a series from Adam Seth Levine. “Diversity increases creativity and innovation…interacting with people from different backgrounds…can [also] be a source of…conflict.” With that possibility in mind, Adam Seth Levine wanted to know if the experience itself was enjoyable.
