research out of academia

im pretty disabled and so can't go to university to study anything, but im really interested in our interaction with the internet (as an entity) and through the internet (with other people)

so recently i decided im gonna start studying that myself! im not sure where im going to start, but i want to explore such a wide range of things! psychology and linguistics are probably the two fields that have already done a lot of work on this, but i'd also like to study the sociology of it!

idk if i'll find anything that changes the way we interact with the internet, probably not, but i am excited to learn and discover c:

walk

Hi ~beefox! Your post reminded me to

Ferran Sunyer i Balaguer (his biography in Catalan; it is more detailed than the English version)

TLDR; He was very disabled and he lived in a town. He couldn't go to university and learned mathematics in the summer, from the engineering books of his cousin!

He was a well recognized mathematician with many important publications (he dictated them to his mother and sister), but in Spain, legally, he wasn't a researcher. He had to pass the exams to get the bachelor's degree in mathematics (I think it took him a year) and did a PhD. When he finally obtained a researcher position, died 18 days later.

There is a documentary that I haven't seen yet! Let me know if you want to know something else about him :)

beefox

this makes me happy, and sad, but im glad he existed and pesured his interests c: thank you for informing me of his existance

locha

Hi ~beefox, it's a big subject! Can you give examples of specific questions or cases that interest you? Much like ~commence2897, I'd be happy to help (locha@rawtext.club). I'm a philosopher of mind, but I've specialized in corpus methods, which got me into philosophy of language and had me read some linguistics.

beefox

that's the thing and part of the reason why i can't just go to school for it, it is a big topic that crosses many different fields and its all interesting to me! for example how we create words and expand language, and how the internet has effected that, or the concept of identity and its relation to the internet (i know many people consider their online selves kind of separate to their in person selves!) its all really interesting to me c:

commence2897

hey there - i hope you enjoy learning!

i'm in my final year of linguistics (and communication - so there's a fair amount of sociology), so i'm more than happy to share resources, pointers and what have you over at midnight.pub@sbcv.co.uk.

i'm excited to read whatever you find! academia shouldn't just be for folks at college when so many folks interact with things that can be studied.

george

Probably not. But you might! And you will, indeed, learn and discover along the way...

Good luck with your quest!

beefox

thanks! <3 ill def be posting my discoveries onto the web as i go, i don't care if i tred covered ground honestly, i want to discover these things and ask questions c:

george

Sounds great! Even if it's covered ground, it won't be covered through *your* lens... I will watch with interest!