Thursday, August 14, 2008

Remembering Nuafrica

I thought about Nuafrica yesterday and then again today, and I figured out what I think about it.

The reason it was fun for a while was that it was like talking to your friends in a smart and well prepped seminar over coffee. You knew you were not going to be cited, like you were publishing. What you said mattered, but not as much as a published commentary or review.

Not any more: now it is all "publishing."

Nuafrica would have to return as a small, closed arena, with no publication permitted, to have the same freedom. It would have to reemerge as an exclusive, opaque domain, — in order to mimic its earlier function as an open thread discussion forum for people who might actually share incipient ideas.

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