Comments on: This time it’s personal http://www.fastforwardblog.com/2007/01/24/this-time-its-personal/ Sat, 07 Nov 2009 18:38:51 -0600 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Jack Vinson http://www.fastforwardblog.com/2007/01/24/this-time-its-personal/comment-page-1/#comment-544 Jack Vinson Thu, 25 Jan 2007 23:08:45 +0000 http://fastforwardblog.com/2007/01/24/this-time-its-personal/#comment-544 This happened to me in grad school in the early 1990's. The department set up a (usenet) newsgroup hanging off the school's node. When I posted several announcements or requests to the newsgroup, one of the faculty members told me that the newsgroup was only for "serious" posts. There was no activity after that. Then when I moved to another university (post-doc research) and my personal page was linked to my profile, one of the faculty members was offended that there was such frivolous stuff associated with the department's website. That was in 1995, when the idea of the web was really new. It's sad to see that nothing has changed. And yet it is not surprising. We keep wanting things (software, business reorganization) to fix our problems without going deeper and fixing the broken motivations and processes behind the problem. As long as that happens, we'll continue seeing these kinds of dances. This happened to me in grad school in the early 1990’s. The department set up a (usenet) newsgroup hanging off the school’s node. When I posted several announcements or requests to the newsgroup, one of the faculty members told me that the newsgroup was only for “serious” posts. There was no activity after that.

Then when I moved to another university (post-doc research) and my personal page was linked to my profile, one of the faculty members was offended that there was such frivolous stuff associated with the department’s website. That was in 1995, when the idea of the web was really new.

It’s sad to see that nothing has changed. And yet it is not surprising. We keep wanting things (software, business reorganization) to fix our problems without going deeper and fixing the broken motivations and processes behind the problem. As long as that happens, we’ll continue seeing these kinds of dances.

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