Reinventing Discovery_ The New Era of Networked Science - Michael Nielsen [0]
REINVENTING
DISCOVERY
The New Era of Networked Science
Michael Nielsen
Copyright © 2012 by Michael Nielsen
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Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Nielsen, Michael A., 1974–
Reinventing discovery: the new era of networked science / Michael Nielsen.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-691-14890-8 (hardback)
1. Research-Technological innovations. 2. Discoveries in science. 3. Internet.
4. Information networks. 5. Information technology. I. Title.
Q180.55.M4N54 2011
509-dc23 2011020248
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
This book has been composed in Minion
Printed on acid-free pa ∞
Typeset by S R Nova Pvt Ltd, Bangalore, India
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
1. Reinventing Discovery
PART 1. AMPLIFYING COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE
2. Online Tools Make Us Smarter
3. Restructuring Expert Attention
4. Patterns of Online Collaboration
5. The Limits and the Potential of Collective Intelligence
PART 2. NETWORKED SCIENCE
6. All the World’s Knowledge
7. Democratizing Science
8. The Challenge of Doing Science in the Open
9. The Open Science Imperative
Appendix: The Problem Solved by the Polymath Project
Acknowledgments
Selected Sources and Suggestions for Further Reading
Notes
References
Index
REINVENTING DISCOVERY
CHAPTER 1
Reinventing Discovery
Tim Gowers is not your typical blogger. A mathematician at Cambridge University, Gowers is a recipient of the highest honor in mathematics, the Fields Medal, often called the Nobel Prize of mathematics. His blog radiates mathematical ideas and insight.
In January 2009, Gowers decided to use his blog to run a very unusual social experiment. He picked out an important and difficult unsolved mathematical problem, a problem he said he’d “love to solve.” But instead of attacking the problem on his own, or with a few close colleagues, he decided to attack the problem completely in the open, using his blog to post ideas and partial progress. What’s more, he issued an open invitation asking other people to help out. Anyone could follow along and, if they had an idea, explain it in the comments section of the blog. Gowers hoped that many minds would be more powerful than one, that they would stimulate each other with different expertise and perspectives, and collectively make easy work of his hard mathematical problem. He dubbed the experiment the Polymath Project.
The Polymath Project got off to a slow start. Seven hours after Gowers opened up his blog for mathematical discussion, not a single person had commented. Then a mathematician named Jozsef Solymosi from the University of British Columbia posted a comment suggesting a variation on Gowers’s problem, a variation which was easier, but which Solymosi thought might throw light on the original problem. Fifteen minutes later, an Arizona high-school teacher named Jason Dyer chimed in with a thought of his own. And just three minutes after that, UCLA mathematician Terence Tao—like Gowers, a Fields medalist—added a comment. The comments erupted: over the next 37 days, 27 people wrote 800 mathematical comments, containing more than 170,000 words. Reading through the comments you see ideas proposed, refined, and discarded, all with incredible speed. You see top mathematicians making mistakes, going down wrong paths, getting their hands dirty following up the most mundane of details, relentlessly pursuing a solution. And through all the false starts and wrong turns, you see a gradual dawning of insight. Gowers described the Polymath process as being “to normal research as driving