about geoweb-r

[Eric Theise]

Hello,

I joined this list back in 2012 when Alan McConchie was still running his Twitter #geowebchats. At some point I was given moderator privileges and still occasionally approve informative postings that should get through and block wildly-inappropriate recruiter spam.

I don't think there's been any actual discussion on this list since late 2019 and most of what does come across comes with "apologies for cross-posting". I am ready to exit this list but if it is to continue, it needs an active moderator.

I question whether this list needs to exist at all given the nature of list traffic.

I would also be interested to learn if the discussions this list was intended to foster are taking place elsewhere.

Thanks, Eric

[Eric Theise]

Huh. 48 hours, 320+ list members, zero responses.

Well, I'm only a list moderator, not an owner, so I don't have the privileges to shut the list down but I am taking my leave. Sorry for the noise, just trying to be responsible.

Cheers, Eric

[ryan burns]

Hi Eric, hi all, 

Interesting to hear you didn't get any responses. I skipped over it because I have no strong feelings either way: in recent years the low traffic has caused me to mostly overlook the list when emailing out CFPs, etc. 

The low traffic is probably related to shifting institutional and scholarly priorities. When it was founded, we were all interested in theorizing this new socio-technical moment and set of practices we called the "geoweb", but now even the term feels dated. We've sort of "moved on" as a sub-discipline. It's not a neutral development, of course, as there's a lot of institutional pressure to conduct "cutting-edge" research, with presumably less "cutting-edge" questions and empirics relegated to non-funding, difficulties with career progression, etc. It makes career-strategic sense within neoliberalized academia to discard neologisms after a few years. But still, part of me feels that a lot of current digital geographies research - arguably a more institutionally rewarding field right now - is propelled by these same imperatives, and especially in its rebranding older geoweb-era questions so they're cited more frequently, "new" areas are opened for collective career benefit, etc. I may get crucified for saying this, but frankly, a lot of the work being done right now on algorithms feels like this sort of rebranding and reiterating older lessons and principles from studies of software, code, web 2.0 (talk about dated), cyberspace, digital cities, indeed geoweb, etc. New look, same great taste! 

To be perfectly clear, let me repeat: insofar as there's any truth in what I've said, it's a highly political, unevenly impacting, unfortunate byproduct of neoliberalizing academia. I'm not advocating we hang on to geoweb-r as some sort of resistance tactic akin to slow scholarship, just thinking about how scholarly terms come in and out of vogue increasingly quickly. 

All this to say, maybe it was short-sighted to name it geoweb-r, and we're now seeing the fallout of that decision. It may be time to say goodbye to the list and either migrate to other existing lists or make a new broader one (I'm not about to suggest a name or even recommend this happen). 

Cheers, 

Ryan 

--
Ryan Burns, PhD
Engaging Open Data Research
Book Review Editor, The Canadian Geographer
O'Brien Institute for Public Health
Department of Geography
University of Calgary

http://burnsr77.github.io

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