Like other Internet media, blogging expects near-instant response to any event. Responses from professional scientists and writers, however, are expected to be thoughtful, well-informed and considered. That takes time -- i.e. it isn't near-instant.

In practice, this conflict often seems to me to be resolved by the expert responding with a statement describing the event, filtered through the grid of his or her previously-held beliefs ('expertise'). What's wrong with that? Nothing; it's what we all do.

Yet it isn't really thoughtful analysis, more a rote response. The previously-held beliefs aren't changed by the new event. The expert dictates his or her opinion, but rarely alters it.

I respect these experts, and their views which have been developed over years, and I think it's great that we have access to that expertise. But I find myself uncomfortable in the 'expert' role. It's too prone to encourage unwarranted certainties.

That's not just a problem for experts, but for all of us. The more certainty expressed by them and others, the more 'dogmatic' becomes admired as 'decisive', the more unexpected, and hence alarming, uncertainty becomes. That in turn makes it harder to express uncertainty, as climate change scientists have discovered to their dismay. (For some staggering examples of how people can react to uncertainty -- and to statements they find threatening -- explore the comments on this article by Andrew Simms).

'People want certainty', I was once told by a media person. Indeed. They want other things too, like eternal life, perfect health, and endless economic growth without ruining the planet. Unfortunately, wanting something doesn't automatically entitle you to get it. Sometimes the laws of physics get in the way, and you just can't argue with them. And sometimes we just don't know enough to be certain.

In praise of slow thought

The difference I'm highlighting is between being authoritative and being exploratory. I'm exploratory by instinct. Too cautious, maybe, distrusting my own opinions and expecting my previously-held beliefs to change with new information -- rather than to provide a rigid filter through which I can interpret new events. I rework and rethink, by preference. Writing this post? Hours of work (another reason why I'm calling it quits).

This hesitant, querying, always-revising approach results from early brainwashing by an ideal of careful scholarship which is now an immovable millstone weighing me down. It makes for a slow, old-fashioned thinker who needs time to think afresh on each occasion -- even for an event like the massacre I mentioned, which as a topic should have been right in my ballpark. I can't just say, 'We don't know yet, but here's my theory ...", like others do. We don't know; why act as if we do?

Re the massacre, there wasn't enough information in the public domain to make it clear at that point what was going on. If I'd responded (which I didn't), my post would have been no more than a guess based on pre-established thinking (i.e. something old), dressed up as a rapid-fire interpretation (i.e. something new). Sorry, no can do.

The Internet has given us virtually instantaneous communication. Because this is so obvious a feature of the new media, people seem to have decided that speed of response is an excellent thing in itself, irrespective of the quality of the response. I hope as our relationship with the Internet matures this obsession with speed will fade. Is it always really essential that whatever it is you're saying is said right now? Slow thought, like slow food, has its advantages. It's often better thought, especially when emotions are involved. If you've ever regretted firing off an angry e-mail, you understand me.

Salience

Blogging competes for our overwhelmed attentional resources. What attracts attention? Not slow thought, for sure. Fast responses, short statements, eye-catching titles and images, personal statements, provocative claims and moral judgements. I could have given this post a title like 'Why This Is The Last Post On This Blog'), but isn't 'What's Wrong with Blogging' more likely to draw in readers? It makes a general claim, and includes a moral judgement ... what's not to like?

This approach has worked for UK tabloid newspapers, and for many books, blogs and other creative enterprises. I regret my own incapacity to follow suit. Done well, sensationalism can make an author rich (don't you agree, Mr Gladwell and Professor Dawkins?). Yet sometimes the low-profile, the non-attention-seeking, the quiet can turn out to be more useful in the long term. Look at Mary Douglas' great book Purity and Danger, now a classic in its field, hardly noticed outside academia for years after it was published. (And a far better book than The God Delusion.)

Value

Most of what is written on the Internet, like most of what is written in newspapers, is pretty forgettable, often facile, and sometimes downright false. Facile, forgettable, false -- a great recipe for fast media, provoking and grabbing attention without the need to spend time checking whether statements are true. It's not so useful if knowledge and truth are your main concern, as is often the case with slow thinking.

(Science is a great example of slow thinking -- or it should be. That's why I think the recent trend towards releasing details of studies before they've been published -- in some cases before they've even been submitted for publication -- is so pernicious. It's also why I and many other UK academics detest the notion, beloved it seems of our measuromaniac government, of funding bodies using media 'impact' as a measure of the quality of research.)

'A seeker after knowledge, is she?' I can almost hear the cries of 'Pretentious! Elitist!'. If you're minded to join in, bear in mind that you owe your existence and your modern-day comforts, including the machine on which you're reading this, to those devoted scientific and technical elitists who pursued knowledge and cared enough about the truth to get their science right.

Elitism follows from human difference. Democracy as a political system -- giving voters an equal say in choosing who rules them -- is a nice theory. Applied to intellectual endeavour it's a non-starter, because there all men aren't equal (likewise for women), either in ability or, more importantly, in basic motivation. We differ in how much we care about understanding stuff, just as we differ on how much we care about poverty or sex or many other things.

Generally, however, we agree in caring a lot about ourselves. Yet some of the things we value most -- from cathedrals to the Internet -- were created by people who temporarily suppressed their own personal values in order to pursue something greater, be it something useful, beautiful, true or divine. We don't even know the names of most of the people who built the European cathedrals, just as few of us can name the programmers who created the nuts and bolts of modern communication. Those programmers did their work over years or decades. Cologne cathedral took centuries to build.

Science, my prime example of slow thinking, demands both long commitment and  depersonalisation in its pursuit of understanding. Blogging, by contrast, is all about the quick and personal. My view, my life, my experiences, my opinions: now.