I’m happy to be blogging here and I want to thank Jon Smajda, Chris Uggen, and the other folks at Contexts, for the invitation. I’ll be back with a more substantive post soon, but assume most readers don’t know me so I thought I’d offer a brief intro.
I started thinking about technology in my research and teaching in 1996-1997. The timing of this new thinking was not coincidental. That was also the same year that Chris Toulouse (my co-conspirator and fellow blogger here) and I started teaching together at a suburban Long Island university. Chris shared with me his enthusiasm for using computers in the classroom and quickly convinced me of the importance of cyberspace for sociologists interested in understanding society in the 21st century. Chris and I both lived in Brooklyn at that time, so we often commuted together on the Long Island Railroad (LIRR). And, it was on those LIRR journeys that Chris and I talked for hours about the way that sociology as a field of study and our jobs as professors in the classroom were going to change because of the Internet.
In about 2001, Chris and I together approached some people within the ASA administration about the tsunami-like changes that were soon to transform the discipline. Our suggestions were met with politely blank stares. At the same time, some of our colleagues were discouraging us from using technology in the classroom or from focusing on it in our research, because after all, “the Internet is a fad.”
Fortunately, lots of things have changed since those days. Chris and I are friends now more than colleagues, since we’ve both moved on to other institutions; and, most people realize that the Internet is something more than a fad. And, most delightfully, the ASA has begun to wrestle with the implications of digital technologies for the discipline. Yet, I think that sociologists are still just beginning to ponder what the Internet might mean for our usual practices of research and teaching. This is where Chris and I come in. We’re still having those long conversations about technology and how it is transforming sociological research and teaching. At this point, we’ve each also had more than ten years of experience doing research and teaching with, about and through the Internet, and we’ll draw on that background for our writing here. Our plan is to update this blog five days a week, Monday-Friday mostly. I’ll focus on research, methods, and how the way we think about society is changing because of the Internet and “social media” more broadly. Chris will focus primarily on the classroom and how these technologies are changing how we think of the pedagogical side of our jobs. Of course, Chris has things to say about research, and I have a good deal to say about teaching, but that’s the general plan. That said, we recognize that the distinction between “research” and “teaching” is often a false one, so feel free to regard those categories as heuristic devices.
So, again I’m happy to be here, and look forward to this new blogging venture as a way of expanding the conversation to include new friends and colleagues.