Sharing economy …

… or being Pawlowian dog?

There are so many “likes” and endorsements and people one “knows”, i.e. with whom one is “friends” or to whom one is linked in, gated in a research “community” …, and one gets frequently messages about having been found or people following you on academic sites while you are yourself googling around the world … – it really sometimes suggests that we are all brothers and sisters now — such a joyful time os sharing being endorsed and not alone: yes, somebody …

… has endorsed you …, and likes you … and was interested in y0ur work … and wants to be linked to you and be part of your network and … there are all these messages about your achievements, and how many people read your articles and quoted it and watched your videos …

… and there are at least two things that may makes us especially think, two remarkable facts even if we state that the figures are actually correct (though I do know for sure that they often are not):

First, there on the WWW (as well as in the traditional print media) the reported figures are actually often remarkably low. Second, there is a misconception by high figures: for instance publishers sell “packages” to libraries, and if one is “lucky” enough to be part of such package, one benefits from the package numbers – something I currently suspect: For instance, I contributed to a book titled KONDRATIEFF WAVES . Juglar – Kuznets – Kondratieff which has high scores. I am seriously wondering if any of these reading brothers and sisters even recognised the title of my contribution in the book (the downloads of the entire book brings the scores …), dealing with Indicators – More than Evidence and Maths – well, this probably is not the only contribution that drowned in the floods of contributions.

But the Pawlowian dog begins for me at another point, and lets me ask if I am part and guinea pig of any larger test scenario.

People endorsing me for several things – and I am of course most grateful. And then people do this not I know that they do not know what I am working on AND they can know that they are endorsing me for something I hardly know anything about, let alone deserving to be endorsed as expert.

So may be that the question underlying big brothers test is the following: How much expertise do people accept on there shoulders, even if they are not experts at all?

Latest when somebody endorses me for …believing everything — I will turn the endorsement down – may be my biographer(s) can add little notes here and there – before the work will emerge as biography and pos to print, saying probably more about the biographer than about the biographee.
Ma grazie lo stesso ….  è molto gentile, mi obbligando molto …