This Blog

thoughtomatt is my space for reflecting on academia, media, philosophy, social institutions, teaching, and technology. The ideas expressed here are my own—in the sense that they may not represent the viewpoint of past or current employers, friends, acquaintances, fellow citizens, or the like—though much of my work here is in making accessible the insights of giants. My views are subject to change, and I expect that I will experiment with different modes of writing ranging from serious, academic work to irreverent polemics to satirical fiction.

Me

I’m not a particularly interesting subject, but if you’re the kind of person who wants to know about authors, the gist is:

• I have an advanced degree in philosophy, and I’ve worked as a philosopher for more than a decade now.
• I have professional and personal interests in social thought, technology, and media.
• I’m a highly-regarded teacher with more than a decade of experience teaching popular—though rigorous—classes.
• I have many opinions, some of which are better informed than others.
• I have two academic talismen: an original copy of Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (from the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science), and a copy of Foucault’s Discipline and Punish that is autographed by Paris and Nicky Hilton.

Comments

Given the internet wisdom that one shouldn’t “read the comments” as well as my experiences in the last 20+ years online, I’ve decided that, for now, I don’t do comments. To be entirely candid: spending my time writing is more rewarding than moderating comments, unmoderated comments are usually less than worthless, and moderated comments aren’t great shakes either. The philosophy blogosphere is subject to the same levels of trolls and other cretins, and, really, ain’t nobody got time for that.

If you want to be in touch, feel free to email me at thoughtomatt at gmail dot com. Remember, though, that your email is a request for my resources—minimally, my time and attention. Try to write with that in mind. Some helpful hints:

1. Fan mail and contact from former students, colleagues, and friends is welcome, as are thoughtful inquiries about the content of this site.
2. Well-informed, civil disagreement is also welcome (at least, when I have the time).
3. If you aren’t civil, I reserve the right to post your email with your email address here.
4. If you aren’t well-informed, I’m likely not to bother. Life is too short, and I don’t work  for free.

Copyright information

The work on this site by Matt Burstein is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.