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. […]
James L.
The down spike before Katrina might be people vacationing just before school starts, at least in the US.
Matt
That downward spike could be something as simple as it being a slow news day/week in the middle of the summer. People are away, the politicians are actually not being too obnoxious and to top everything off there’s a lot of nice weather to keep people happy and away from their compluters.
(Though the biggest thing is probably a slow news week/day)
Francois Lachance
There are two graphs being read side by side: number of postings to blogs; timeline of events. The statistics don’t indicate if the posts are on the subject of the events. What would be very interesting would be to track persistence of topics through time. How long does each current event maintain blogger attention? As well as number of blog entries, there is also the length factor. Many short entries versus less but longer entries.
What is most striking in the posting data though under played by the comparative points in time (almost more suitable to compare event reaction with a set of bar graphs) is the upward trend: more postings over time. Does this indicate a greater participation in politicized discourse or simply more consistent blogging. Be interersting to compare to 2003 figures. As well how much of that increase in blogging is newcomers or already bloggers blogging more?
Martin
I also suspect that many of the people who are heavy posters are people who are involved
in political discourse of some sort, while “civilian” bloggers probably are more sporadic posters. .
Also, many of those political events are so big that they would also be commented on by civilian blogs: Katrina, election day, the London bombings.
Shaded
When Katrina hit people stopped posting long enough to learn from the news what was going on, then they started talking again.
The dip is when people are learning. You know how some people say “shut up you might learn something?” Think of this as the entire blogosphere listening. The peak is when people are error checking (Talking to others and testing their ideas)
Great graph by the way… never seen it before.
Jill
Good grief, I didn’t link to the report where I found the graph – added hte link now! There’s lots of other stats there too, as well as in part 2.
Thomas
Jill asks: “And whatís that downward spike just before Hurricane Katrina about?”
Well, I guess it was the calm before the storm …
Jill
Haha 🙂
Dennis G. Jerz
I’m not so sure I buy Shaded’s explanation.
In addition to vacations, that downward spike might represent a lot of college students in transit, a lot of academics frantically trying to finish their syllabi. There’s a similar gap around the same time in 2004, though of course that raises the question of why late 2004 seemed to be a dry time for blogging.
Chuck
Late 2004 could be similar. People are home for the holidays, visiting family. And of course aacdmeics in English departments are at MLA (or working on syllabi). I’d imagine that travel probably is a major factor in some of those dips.