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A New Paradigm for Research Home
"Many of today's most compelling new questions are still tackled with old institutional models; it's ironic that religion has had its Reformation but that the role of a research university would be recognizable to a medieval monk." -- Neil Gershenfeld, MIT You would think that universities, with their reputation for innovation, abstract thought, and pure research, would be leaders in guiding the knowledge revolution symbolized by the Internet. But to a large degree today's colleges are stuck in a time warp. They still do things according to the model developed by Oxford and the University of Bologna in the 12th century; a scholar develops an idea, discovery, invention, or new theory; presents it at a conference a few months later, publishes it as an abstract, submits it to peer reviewed journals, and awaits its adoption by the right people. The whole process takes months or years.
In 1439, when Gutenberg invented his printing press, this was fine. In fact it was at the leading edge of technology. It was a great system for its time, and indeed helped empower the Renaissance and the scientific revolution epitomized by Newton and Galileo.
But it's now 2009. Why does research in the age of Web 3.0 still operate at an oxcart's pace?
Today, scholars all over the world can connect instantaneously. Theories can be developed, refined, and adjusted at the speed of light. Thousands can devote their unique niche talents to a problem that would take a small group of researchers at one institute years to solve. The species is approaching the kind of efficiency that previously was only seen in one integrated biological brain; as Alex Pentland has said, "The nervous system of the human race has come alive."
Universities ignore this at their peril.
In some cases, this isn't a big problem. If you are writing a scholarly monograph on, say, Icelandic sagas of the 8th century, it probably doesn't matter a lot whether your paper appears in 2009 or 2010.
But what if you are working on a cure for cancer? What if you have a unique solution for Global Warming? People who could potentially benefit from your research could actually die before your work makes its way through the old, bloated channels to publication and adoption.
Says Larrry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia: "I believe that researchers are drawn to the wiki model because they naturally love several ideas suggested by the model; working closely with large numbers of their colleagues spread over the world; updating shared knowledge on the fly and avoiding costly duplication of labor; presenting knowledge systematically and in all its glorious complexity, and providing clear and compelling free access to important knowledge of their fields to a world that, in many cases, desperately needs such access."
The purpose of this site is to explore how new research paradigms can revolutionize the way knowledge advances in the sciences, the arts, and the humanities.
Feel free to contribute your ideas and suggestions. You can comment at the bottom of this page, or you can form your own discussion group within your particular field.
You can also post videos, podcasts, links to other sites, and PDF files. Send private suggestions and questions to anewparadigmforresearch@gmail.com or worldmindnetwork@gmail.com.
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Latest page update: made by JohnModerator
, Jul 11 2009, 5:14 PM EDT
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| Started By | Thread Subject | Replies | Last Post | ||
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| Anonymous | Pollution | 0 | Dec 24 2009, 1:20 AM EST by Anonymous | ||
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Thread started: Dec 24 2009, 1:20 AM EST
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Just a though to remove smog, could be far fetched but what the heck. Some type of nano tech, a nano net if you will, that is polarized to attracted particles in smog. The nano net could be held by two large planes or whatever, taking it through polluted areas and the smog could be taken to the ocean, where natural weather systems would alleviate smog. I know it is a dream. Had the idea for a while now, it is in the ether. Hope some one runs with it.
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| Anonymous | Agree totally - but it's all about funding! | 0 | Nov 7 2009, 4:11 PM EST by Anonymous | ||
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Thread started: Nov 7 2009, 4:11 PM EST
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I am in total agreement with this post that academia is a horribly inflexible, limiting and archaic model in an internetworked age. I'm running up against this right now as I begin applying to PhD programs -- I see no reason why I can't do research from where I am with others all over the globe using the internet, and thereby "routing around" the entire university system. Unfortunately, as a practical matter I need to eat, so to get funding to do research seems to require that I play by the rules of the academic game. So this is where the new paradigm fails -- there needs to be a system for distributing funds to researchers that doesn't go through academic channels. I'm ready to be the first test case -- would anyone like to support my net-centric research (quantitative studies of emergent intelligence, the global brain, semantic/data mining, complex systems and the like)?
Please contact me at seanctaylor1@gmail.com if anyone has any suggestions. |
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| Anonymous | ECONOMICS NEEDS A RENAISSANCE | 0 | Sep 7 2009, 9:11 PM EDT by Anonymous | ||
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Thread started: Sep 7 2009, 9:11 PM EDT
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ECONOMIC IS NOT PHYSICS. ALL THE MATHEMATICALLY CONSISTENT MODELS IN THE WORLD, MEAN LITTLE IF THEY ARE NOT EXTERNALLY VALID IN ADDRESSING REAL WORLD PROBLEMS.
JEFFREY M DOYLE, PH.D. PRESIDENT, THERMOECONOMIC VISIONS MEMBER, WORLD FUTURE SOCIETY |
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