It's about keeping our jobs and keeping publishers in business. It's not about advancing the state of the Web. Boring.
Keeping your job is more important than your research having an impact. Okay fine, you can have that opinion. But get out of my way.
I struggle to relate to pushback against Linked Research ideas because of money/job/norms problems. I get that these are important issues for some people, but I'm so TIRED of people using this to blockade even discussing it. It's like they don't want the status quo to change; it's comfortable. They know one way to keep their job or get funding, and won't contemplate developing others. Use the goverment funding assignment as an excuse. Easy out, no point in bothering, the government will never change. Reinforce this for the next cohort of student. Keep perpetuating the problems for the next generation. This isn't what I want from academia, and I won't play.
Prof Denemark crystallises some of the complex political contexts in which people use the Web and social media globally. When we study social media it's easy to forget the real people in real places with real events occurring around them.
In reply to: https://rhiaro.co.uk/2017/04/at-wow2017
We had ten years of the Web before we had Google.. We take for granted the future of the Web, but it's really only been around for a tiny fraction of time... Because we put content on the Web is why it grows. If we stop, it dies.
Technologists can't study the web alone. We need a whole interdisciplinary relay to try to understand the Web and make sure it stays good for humanity. Right now I'm worried it's on the cusp of *not* being good for humanity.
Today we're talking about the Web Observatory, and then about decentralisation of the world. They're connected by data. We want Web Observatories around the world... lots of telescopes, links to datasets eg. webobservatory.soton.ac.uk.
Twenty years ago, we started Southampton eprints. People thought we were mad. The rest of the world caught up... but I did not forsee a world where I'd have to pay thousands of dollars to publish an open access publication. That's not we envisioned. To me, a Web Science approach to studying this issue is absolutely overdue.
I interrupt the writing of this paper about quantified self to log my dinner.
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