Well, unless the lights go out with the power. Then it’s back to orality.

The Biagioli article pairs well w/ Sam’s work, as it focuses on how commercial publishing & its data practices have become infrastructural for the neoliberal subjectivization of academics & schol comm professionals. Sam’s focus on commoning points to a countervailing force: scholar-led publishing.

I use the admitted vague “communities of inquiry”; Mario Biagioli used “communities of expertise” when writing abt the bifurcation of scholarly evaluation btwn (local, insider, expert) peer review & (universal, outsider, non-expert) metrics regimes.

doi.org/10.1086/699152

I’m thru ch 1, which lays out commons theory. Sam writes abt the “locality” of the groups that coalesce to self-govern resources. I’ve tended to use “plurality” to get at group-relative differences but haven’t figure out how best to figure the extent or placement of groups.

I have a ton of respect for what the grad-student associate editors / social media team of the SCA has done over the last 15 years. But I hope the current & future team will hold that legacy lightly. I’m excited to see what all this creativity & intelligence does next.

There’s no way to reproduce the glory days of media regimes: newsletters, listservs, wikis, blogs, micro-blogs, etc. The density & effervescence of publics, organized through whatever channel, is always transient. It is time to reflect, mourn, & move on. And to start again.

Didn’t you write something like a post mortem of the anthro blogosphere? It might be time for the retiring SCA social media leaders to attempt something similar.