Academic disabilities

The academic conferences, in my humble opinion, must represents occasions where experts and professionals from various domains are gathering together to share the results of their researches and analyse it using the tools of the critical thinking.

But, when the topics are connected to more or less recent histories, where the place of built and manipulated memories is playing the a very - if not the only - important role, these conferences are opportunities to display historical frustrations and precarious identities. The critical thinking is the last resort used for understanding and reading the realities.

The conferences with historical and political topics, addressing unsolved issues as the Balkans and the Caucasus are a good example in this direction. And I will randomly mention a couple of situations I observed in my last academic peregrinations: Hungarians claiming their right over Transylvania; Romanians claiming their predominance over Transylvania; representatives from the former Yugoslav countries fighting over who killed more and finding as well explanations and excuses for doing so; Armenians and Turks harshly fighting if it was or not an Armenian genocide; Armenians and Azeris accusing each other of aggressions. The pathetic discourses, and the passionate perspectives are killing any hope for critical appreciation. What matters is to claim that you - and only you - have and tell the truth and to deconstruct - and nullify - the point of view of the other.

What for so many hours spent in libraries and so many efforts to write presentations introduced as academic prodigies, when the basic level of the approach is not going too far of the usual information you could find in the "yellow media"?

New reading habits and e-research

The expansion of the new media techniques is influencing already the ways we set up and organize our research. During the last ten years, I changed for a couple of time the management of my notes and readings. At the beginning, I was writing on sheets of papers, carefully organized in identitified files. They occupied plenty of place, gathered lot of dust and for finding something it took quite a lot of time. Everthing was organized mostly as it was find in the book or paper I was reading. Also, they were the books everywhere, with various colorful bumperstickers. I keep today both the paper files and the books and usually I could use scraps of paper when I need to keep in mind any idea.

Soon after, I introduced in my research world the scanned materials, not always with good visibility and always overloading my computer. They were joined by downloads, organized in matrioshka's boxes like folders with names, category, mentioning the stages of the project, the specific theme addressed etc. The information on paper could be easily lost - a reversed cup of coffee or a bad ink could lost everything for ever. The same for the files from the computer, a virus or a problem with the hard could erase everything. You have the chance of saving on various devices - at least twice - USB, or CDs; before, they were the disks, with the same care for classification.

In the same time, it mushroomed the e-books, digital libraries, on-line book orders, the on-line access to various librarian resources across the world. Google is allowing access to various books, full or fragments only and you can save an unlimited number of links on your yahoo MyPage, and to follow and share your results via Google Docs. The copyright issue continue to be important, but the new technical opportunities are likely to change soon the core of the philosophy of the authorship, as we know from the 18-19 century.

Our office is everywhere, as long as we have a good internet connection and a reliable notebook. And, of course, a good anti-virus system.

The basis of the research networks widened, because through the Internet you could get in touch with various researchers by sharing your interests on blogs, or making comments to various academic researches. It is cheaper, easy to handle and it's have the potential of highly improving the quality and quantity of the academic research. The skills from the old days of print are still available, because without a strict(er) time and resources management, most part of the information could be simply wasted. And the idea of honesty and respect for the scientific accountability will survive.