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. […]
Francois Lachance
Jill,
Could you elaborate? Checking the blog. Does that mean the latest entry? the sidebar material? the look and feel? As you can imagine by these questions, the concept of “blog” is for me a composite one. It is a handy term with several referents. For example at one point in time many blogs featured blog rolls and that was a hand way of checking to see if someone had posted recently. I think that Dr. Walker checks the jill/txt blog to cast her eye on the illustration that acts as a banner …
b¯rge
This is perfect! I’m looking for a job for the summer. I could be your ghostblogger! How much do you pay..? 🙂
weez
The answer is “yes” if it is a slow day…which happens on occassion.
And could you provide a job dscription for this ghostblogger position?
William Wend
Jill I also do that. I check the layout and sidebar 3-4 times a day to make sure nothing has changed since the last time I looked. I also have posts set to auto post (right now I try to do one a day) so I check for that also.
Steven
I like visiting my site throughout the day to check for comments and to read the latest entries. I’m not sure why, maybe because I find the content appealing. On the other hand, I also occasionally like listening to the compositions that I wrote. Not so much because I think they’re good musically but just because they’re mine, and I like to remember that :~) I also re-read entries to look for typographical errors.
Jill
Ah, so I’m not abnormal, then? And WHAT I look at? It’s actually mostly just sort of checking in, I think. I don’t scroll down – I do note whether there are new comments, but mostly it’s an act of reassurance that it’s still there. I think.
Ghostblogger job description: Seeking skilled impersonator to write posts allegedly to be written by Jill. Must even convince Jill herself that she has indeed been blogging.
Sound about right?
Martin
I do that too. It’s like a safe place on the www. A base of operations of sorts. I think I go back there in the same way that I go back to my house between appointments during the day or something.
Rambukk
A personal blog is more than just a blog, you know. It¥s personal. Like a pet, it needs attention. You can¥t just write and publish a text and leave it drifting out in cyber-space on its own. Poor thing.
JoseAngel
And besides, you know, it’s your other self, so it’s a bit like looking at yourself in a mirror in passing, no reason why you shouldn’t do it. B.t.w., some computer screens do reflect your face when the computer is turned off. Isn’t that eerie and unheimlich, too, thinking of your blog in front of a dark reflecting screen?
Esther
I do that all the time. And a pet is a good description…especially as you have to clean its comments up, sometimes it goes missing and you aren’t sure why, it is often pleasing to the eye, it does things you’d rather it didn’t sometimes and it knows you a lot better than you think, but doesn’t engage with you the same way as you engage with it…and so on.
Jill
Oh, yes, the pet metaphor works… and the other self too, actually. Like the way it’s hard to pass a mirror without casting a glance in it just to check that I’m still there…
Lisa Firke
This post made me laugh, because, of course, I had been checking my own blog. And I don’t even have comments enabled!
Wesley
I know excacly what you mean, Jill. These days I’m totally absorbed by my blog (my real blog too, since this one is my secret one. I stumbled past your entrance about creating a secret blog and recognized myself – isn’t it a pity that nobody cares to read the god damn thing?
However – I enjoyed your blog very much. I wish I had the talent to use html in my blogs as you do.
Kind regards
Wesley W.
jill/txt » rituals of closure
[…] Unlike paper diaries, blogs are intended to be read not only by our future selves but by others as we write. Does the presence of the actual reader (indicated by statcounters, links and comments) substitute for the presence of the future, or do we still create our blogs partly as little time capsules sent to ourselves? I wonder whether my main target audience might be myself? I reread my blog constantly, especially the most recent posts which are visible whenever I check on it, but also to find specific things I wrote about, or sometimes to see what I was thinking at a particular time. I’ve never read it all in order as I sometimes read through old paper diaries. All journal writing assumes the intention to write at least one more time, an entry that will call for yet [End Page 100] another one, and so on without end. (..) To “finish” a diary means to cut it off from the future and integrate that future in the reconstruction of the past. […]