I just signed a petition calling for Norwegian universities to use research expertise on AI when deciding how to implement it, rather than having decisions be made mostly administratively. , If you are a researcher in Norway, please read it and sign it if you agree – and share with anyone else who might be interested. The petition was written by three researchers at UiT: Maria Danielsen (a philosopher who completed her PhD in 2025 on AI and ethics, including discussions of art and working life), Knut Ørke (Norwegian as a second language), and Holger Pötzsch (a professor of media studies with many years of research on digital media, video games, disruption, and working life, among other topics). This is not about preventing researchers from exploring AI methods in their research. It is about not uncritically accepting the hype that everyone must use AI everywhere without critical reflection. It is about not introducing Copilot as the default option in word processors, or training PhD candidates to believe they will fall behind if they do not use AI when writing articles, without proper academic discussion. Changes like these should be knowledge-based and discussed academically, not merely decided administratively, because they alter the epistemological foundations of research. Maria wrote to me a couple of months ago because she had read my opinion piece in Aftenposten in which I called for a strong brake on the use of language models in knowledge work. She was part of a committee tasked with developing UiT’s AI strategy and was concerned because there was so much hype and so few members of the committee with actual expertise in AI. I fully support the petition. There are probably some good uses for AI in research, but the uncritical, hype-driven insistence that we must simply adopt it everywhere is highly risky. There are many researchers in Norway with strong expertise in AI, language, ethics, working life, and culture. We must make use of this expertise. This is also partly about respect for research in the humanities, social sciences, psychology, and law. Introducing AI at universities and university colleges is not merely a technical issue, and perhaps not even primarily a technical one. It concerns much more: philosophy of science, methodological reflection, epistemology, writing, publishing, the working environment, and more. […]
jim
I was wondering when exactly does it become a website if it looks, acts and feels like a blog…even made “using blogging software”? or am I being overly pedantic (or perhaps overly loyal to blogging).
Jill
Oh, surely blog is a subcategory of website? Like, everything’s a website (well, if it has a URL it is) and then you can have different kinds of websites, like blogs, search engines, journals, home pages and so on.
noah
The old ELO site also featured news prominently on the front page, and that news was ordered reverse-chronologically, but that news feed was built using some custom script written before blogging software was common. And then there were the same links to information about the organization, the Electronic Literature Directory, and so on. Was the old page a blog as well?
Jill
I suppose in a kind of way – but what I think is done particularly well about the redesign is that it oth offers easy access to a showcase of electronic literature and offers frequently updated news. The more prominent date stamps and archives make it easier for readers to see that this is a site that’s likely to be worth returning to.
Elin
I like the new site:-)
Jose Angel
Maybe one should write (or perhaps it’s already written) the paper “What. if anything, is a blog”, following those biology papers on the contrast between folk categories and real taxonomic differences – “What, if anything, is a rabbit”, “What, if anything, is a zebra…”