Author Archives: Utting Wolff

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About Utting Wolff

The people behind Utting Wolff Spouts are Geoff Jones and Claudia Gillberg, the former a masters student in medicinal chemistry and the latter a PhD in Education. As teenagers we were both hit by myalgic encephalomyelitis and our combined experience of (living with) this illness gives us a bit of an insight into an array of fields. As we have managed to muddle our way through to a number of degrees, job titles and countries we fancy ourselves slightly qualified to spout on science, medical, societal, social, political and cultural matters on occasion. Follow us on Twitter at @DrCGillberg and/or @geoffbiosci.

Critical Debate in Public Spheres: on the risks of dumbing down

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A brief statement explaining the thinking behind this blog:

We believe that blogs and wikis play an important role and can be valuable tools for the creation and maintenance of a critical public sphere. The political philosopher and critical discourse analyst Jürgen Habermas offers some thought on the future of public spheres and the upholding of critical discourse, by drawing parallels between what happened to public writing spheres upon the arrival of mass media and commercialism and what is happening in the blogosphere of today. Mass media put paid to the public writing environments of old as the role of communities of interest and private persons diminished into insignificance. The Internet may suffer a similar fate unless we strive to establish sustainable structures for upholding a critical dialogue on our blogs and on other tools we have at our disposal. If we wish to counterbalance the ongoing dumbing down of our public spaces we should start on our own doorsteps.

Thank you,

Utting-Wolff