ANDY: Rick, regarding academia and it’s “fixation to ignore the really interesting and productive examples of online collaboration and to only showcase the grand Professors and organizing committee members of such conferences and the menial work they more often are doing” – that’s a real can of worms. But let’s open it anyway.

I think the first thing to address here is that academia and education is changing. Charles Leadbeater has researched and written some great work on this. Well, I say they are changing, but it’s more of a case that they need to change and it will be forced upon them. The pyramid of expertise, of professional elitism, that has driven education has been over-turned in many areas thanks to the web, but higher education in particular is predicated on the idea of a select few having expert knowledge. It’s no wonder that, regardless of new technologies and cultural shifts, the “grand Professors” carry on with their traditional mode. Cultural change requires generational shift, as I mentioned before. Put bluntly, the old men (for it is mainly men) in tenured Professorships need to retire and/or expire in order for that change to happen. (more…)