Wednesday Blog Watch

What is in a blog post?  Blogger Christopher D. Sessums explores the subject after reading Daniel Dennett's Sweet Dreams.  Sessum writes:

After writing in a weblog for two years, I realize that what I write is often a version of something I’ve written or read before. That echo chamber that is the edu’sphere is merely what Dennett might refer to as a multiple drafts theory of consciousness, a mutation of previously used material being recombined over and over. 

We might consider a blog post to be simply a “best of” version of what is being thought aloud, frozen in time. Dennett suggests that this what we do “when we tell others – or even our later selves—about our conscious experience” (p. xi).

Read further musings on Sessum's website about Dennett's theories of consciousness, cognition, and also zombies.

In multimedia this week, the University of Alberta Libraries has made available an audio recording of a recent forum featuring Dr. John Willinsky, author of The Access Principle.  Willinsky speaks about "Open Access: The Sea Changes in Scholarly Publishing".