I was recently listening to a podcast by economist Paul Romer (see: Romer on Growth). This lecture is part of a series of podcasts called EconTalk addressing fundamentals of economics with interviews by the host, Russ Roberts. His guests include some of the leading economists in the country. If you choose to download and listen to only one set of podcasts, this is the one to choose. Professor Romer addresses the topic of economic growth in this particular podcast and explains why the U.S. has been able to maintain an admirable growth rate over many decades despite the very large size of the base economy. He speculates that thee gains has been achieved in part on the basis of what he refers to as meta-ideas or what I will refer to here as meta-resources.
Economic growth is frequently stimulated by new technology or the development of new ways to use existing resources in a beneficial or more efficient way. A key example of an important a meta-resource for the U.S. are our large universities that educate our students about current technology and encourages them to develop new ideas. Research universities also act as facilitators for various types of research, assembling both the facilities and faculty to participate in such ventures.
I view professional blogs (see: Professional Blogs as Publication Vehicles for Physicians in Academic Clinical Tracks) as a meta-resource analogous to scientific journals but different from them in many ways. In previous notes, I have referred to this type of blog as a business intelligence blog. A professional blog encourages innovation and new ideas by acting as a filter and distributor of news and opinion in a field. Busy professionals need such filters because they are preoccupied with their daily work. A variant of the professional blog is the meta-blog which functions as a type of index for other blogs covering similar topics.
By supporting a particular professional blog, workers in a field exhibit trust that the blog will periodically present them with new ideas in a condensed fashion that will enable them to work smarter and and possibly in new ways. The turn-around-time for presenting a new idea on a blog is measured in minutes or hours as opposed to months or years for a print scientific journal. Because of the increasing rapidity of the circulation of new ideas in this information age, the velocity for the promulgation of new ideas on the web is critical.
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