The internet created a lot of new mediums. Blogs, vlogs, tl;dr culture, explainer videos, Twitter, podcasts, clickbait, ELI5, etc. It seems like we never saw new mediums emerge for academia. Probably because the same institutions are consuming and generating the content?
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Replying to @backus
I don’t think of it like that. Journals build brands, and academics who contribute to the journals convert those brands into reputation for themselves, and thus into jobs. So the journals are competing on brand (mostly impact factor and similar), not the quality of the medium.
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Replying to @michael_nielsen @backus
To pick a slightly self-interested example: most ML researchers would (currently) rather have a NIPS paper than a distill paper, even though the latter is a much more interesting medium. Why? The former has a better chance (at present) of getting you a job
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Replying to @michael_nielsen @backus
But shouldn't brand be closely connected to the quality of the medium, at least over longer periods of time? I.e. improved quality -> improved brand, therefore incentives to innovate.
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All others things equal (which they never are, not even close), yes. But you’re talking about many decades. Mostly what seems to be required is very influential people to throw their weight behind new initiatives. Those people rarely have imaginative ideas about design.
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