P. Z. Myers of Pharyngula wonders, “Where is science blogging going?” His post is a musing about how blogs fit into the overall world of science — one in theory more rigorous than the training / learning / performance arenas I tend to frequent.

He notes that there isn’t much accountability in science blogging.

This is a general problem with solutions that bubble up from the ground rather than being defined from above — they do something very, very well, but it usually isn’t the something that a planner would design, and they often won’t easily do something else that you think they ought to do.

He also suggests that it’s hard to design what’s going to be the next stage. Design, he says, is “a terrible paradigm for adding unexpected newness and potential (which any evolutionary biologist would tell you).”

A lot of interesting points of view in the comments on his post, as well, like this one from Blake Stacey:

I think it’s important to remember that the nature of the blogosphere is not carved in marble. A few years ago, it didn’t exist. It just is the way it ended up being. When we want something different, it’ll change. Right now, doing anything other than what we normally do might be like hammering nails with a screwdriver, but when every other tool in your toolbox is broken and getting rustier by the day, you start to wonder how you could modify that screwdriver.

It was this lengthy (and rambly) post on “What Science Blogs Can’t Do” by Stacey at Science after Sunclipse that triggered Myers’ post.