Blogging and Speed Dating
Academic philosophy needs a speed-dating mechanism.
A speed date: a dating arrangement that is incredibly quick, a few minutes or so. You do not want to invest much time in the person, but you do want to see what they offer.
There are few low-commitment ways to get to know an academic philosopher. If you want to know more about a philosopher’s work, you must either: read their academic work, listen to their presentation, or talk to them in-person.
Read. Academic work can be inaccessible, by its nature. The papers are written for specialists, and you may not be a specialist. Even if you are a specialist, reading a philosophy paper can take tremendous amounts of time and energy, time and energy the busy academic may not have to spare.
Listen. You can come to a philosopher’s presentation, but this requires a non-trivial investment of time and energy.
Talk. You can talk to a philosopher in-person, but this requires finding an occassion to talk to them in person. This is not generally feasible, and you may not be interested enough to desire a conversation.
This is a problem. Sometimes you want to get to know a philosopher but you do not want to commit to the reading, listening, and talking conventionally required.
Hence, academic philosophy needs the equivalent of speed-dating. Blogs are the closest thing I’ve found.
I’ve started a blog because blogs are the best low-commitment way to get to know me, for people who are not knee-deep into metaphysics and social ontology.
I keep things casual, yet nonetheless (I hope) interesting. I talk about social ontology and metaphysics. I talk about other areas. I talk about the profession. I talk about myself a bit. It’s a little all over the place. It’s human.
A few years ago, I would have insisted on using more traditional social media platforms for this kind of speed-dating work. Social media platforms are great for having a wide reach, but I’m not interested in having the widest possible reach.
I’m interested in having a small number of people who share values and interests. If you are into the social turn in academic philosophy, if you are interested in genuinely new horizons in philosophy, new approaches, new practices, a new orientation that is still somehow in conversation with the old orientation, then I might just be a person to pay attention to.