• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 363 0

get an informal, rapid-fire glimpse into the minds of many of the world’s scientists. You can go to the blog of Terence Tao and follow along as he struggles to extend our understanding of some of the deepest ideas of mathematics. It’s not just the scientific content that matters, it’s the culture that is revealed, a particular way of viewing the world. This view of the world can take many forms. On the blog of experimental physicist Chad Orzel you can read his whimsical explanations of physics to his dog, or his discussions of explosions in the laboratory. The content ranges widely, but as you read, a pattern starts to take shape: you start to understand at least a little about how an experimental physicist views the world: what he thinks is funny, what he thinks is important, what he finds irritating. You may not necessarily agree with this view of the world, or completely understand it, but it’s interesting and transformative nonetheless. Exposure to this view of the world has always been possible if you live in one of the world’s intellectual capitals, places such as Boston, Cambridge, and Paris. Many blog readers no doubt live in such intellectual centers. But you also routinely see comments on the blog from people who live outside the intellectual centers. I grew up in a big city (Brisbane) in Australia. Compared to most of the world’s population, I had a youth of intellectual privilege. And yet the first time in my life that I heard a scientist speaking informally was when I was 16. It changed my life. Now anyone with an internet connection can go online, and get a glimpse into how scientists think and how they view the world, and perhaps even participate in the conversation. How many people’s lives will that change?

Imagining New Institutions

Institutions such as citizen science, open access, and science blogging are all changing science’s role in our society. Today, these institutions are small, but they’re growing rapidly. Although events such as the Singh case and Hanny’s discovery of the voorwerp are significant, their impact is tiny when compared to society’s largest institutions, such as compulsory schooling. But most big and important institutions start out tiny and inconsequential—think of the humble origins of the school system, or of democratic government. What matters is not the absolute size of an institution, but rather its potential to grow. Institutions are what happens when people are inspired by a common idea, so inspired that they coordinate their actions in pursuit of that idea. Online tools make it far easier to create institutions, by amplifying ideas faster than ever before, and by helping coordinate action.

As an example, Galaxy Zoo began in 2007 with two guys in a pub, working on a budget of chutzpah and imagination. Three years later it involved 25 professional astronomers and 200,000 amateurs. It’s expanded to include projects such as Moon Zoo and Project Solar Storm Watch. How much larger will it be in ten years’ time? Suppose Galaxy Zoo decides to systematically solicit proposals from the astronomy community for the analysis of data sets. It’s not too much of a leap to imagine Galaxy Zoo becoming an institution crucial to the whole field of astronomy, and perhaps to other fields as well. What other new institutions will we have the chutzpah and imagination to dream up? What other new answers will we find to fundamental questions about the role of science in society?

Bridging the Ingenuity Gap

The most isolated place in the world is Easter Island. It’s a tiny island in the southeast Pacific, just 25 kilometers (15 miles) across, 3,500 kilometers (2,200 miles) west of Chile, and 2,100 kilometers (1,300 miles) east of the Pitcairn Islands. The island was originally settled by Polynesian islanders, and its culture thrived for hundreds of years, with the population growing to somewhere between 10,000 and 30,000 people. But as the population grew, the islanders consumed more and more of the island’s resources, and sometime in the 1500s or 1600s, its society collpsed. When Easter