Monday, May 02, 2005
Good Blogging And Bad Blogging
Like everything else, blogging can be put to some pretty bad use. I wonder if this is not one of them.
I have no idea whether this director needs to go from Los Alamos or not, but I think there are several important things that should be taken from this.
This is a semi-military institution, that it is a "non-democratic" institution should not be up for argument. Science types always want open democracy, but they can't always have it. They should have known that when they took a job at Los Alamos. In some sense this debate extends back to the establishment of the place. Oppenheimer and Groves argued about it all the time. If they want an "open democratic" work environment they can go to a university to do research.
Secondly, they need to have some faith in the bureaucracy they work for. The article mentions increased inquiries about retirement, this would have eventually been noticed and inquiries made. Bureaucracies are slow, but they usually get the message.
Thirdly, do these people have no sense of national security? What does this say to the rest of the world? Some things just have to be handled behind closed doors.
There are definitely management problems at Los Alamos. Ask yourself this -- how come the military, the ultimately undemocratic institution, allows blogging from it's ranks? Simple, they train their people so well, and treat them so well, they can rely on the fact that their people will not blog in a risky fashion. If there are management problems in the military, you can bet they will not be handled through a blog.
I have a lot of sympathy for these scientists, sounds like they have a real problem on their hands -- but blogging is not the way to solve that problem. I would really hate to see things like this result in their rights to blog about other things curtailed. Speech is free, but it involves responsibility. Abuse it and you will lose it.
A blog rebellion among scientists and engineers at Los Alamos, the federal government's premier nuclear weapons laboratory, is threatening to end the tenure of its director, G. Peter Nanos.Some organizations are democratic and some are not. Those that are, blogging is a great thing. Those that are not blogging can have the inmates running the asylum.
I have no idea whether this director needs to go from Los Alamos or not, but I think there are several important things that should be taken from this.
This is a semi-military institution, that it is a "non-democratic" institution should not be up for argument. Science types always want open democracy, but they can't always have it. They should have known that when they took a job at Los Alamos. In some sense this debate extends back to the establishment of the place. Oppenheimer and Groves argued about it all the time. If they want an "open democratic" work environment they can go to a university to do research.
Secondly, they need to have some faith in the bureaucracy they work for. The article mentions increased inquiries about retirement, this would have eventually been noticed and inquiries made. Bureaucracies are slow, but they usually get the message.
Thirdly, do these people have no sense of national security? What does this say to the rest of the world? Some things just have to be handled behind closed doors.
There are definitely management problems at Los Alamos. Ask yourself this -- how come the military, the ultimately undemocratic institution, allows blogging from it's ranks? Simple, they train their people so well, and treat them so well, they can rely on the fact that their people will not blog in a risky fashion. If there are management problems in the military, you can bet they will not be handled through a blog.
I have a lot of sympathy for these scientists, sounds like they have a real problem on their hands -- but blogging is not the way to solve that problem. I would really hate to see things like this result in their rights to blog about other things curtailed. Speech is free, but it involves responsibility. Abuse it and you will lose it.
