On the Future of Science

bj8rn writes "Kevin Kelly, the founding executive editor of Wired magazine, speculates about the future of science based on a talk he have gave a few weeks ago. Kelly sees recursion as the essence of science and chronicles the introduction of different recursive devices in science; projecting forward from this, he makes several interesting predictions about what the near future may hold in store. Some highlights: there will be more change in the next 50 years of science than in the last 400 years; the new century will be the century of Biology; new ways of knowing will emerge, with 'Wikiscience' leading to perpetually refined papers with thousands of authors."

Comments

Not thinking in a big picture sense

[Anonymous Coward]

This will be interesting considering that the current administration has for the first time in 30 years, reduced the funding of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and not allowed its budget to keep up with inflation and shows their lack of commitment to bioscience research. I predict this damage will take at least 10 years to repair.

An honest question: What exactly makes you assume the next century of scientific advancement will happen in America?

It will be a great and sad loss if America decides to abdicate its position as scientific and technological leader of the world-- which seems to be exactly what is happening, between decreasing public funding; the decreased public perception of the importance of science; the increased difficulty foreign academics are facing under the new and restrictive INS policies of the last four years; and the raft of arbitrary and ignorance-fueled restrictions Congress has placed on bioscience research (while still somehow expecting innovative results).

But if America does decide to go the route it is currently on and abandon its position as science leader, the rest of the world can move on without us. It will just take a little bit of time to reshuffle things.

Re:Not thinking in a big picture sense

[BWJones]

An honest question: What exactly makes you assume the next century of scientific advancement will happen in America?

This is actually a really, really good question. My answer would be that the NIH has historically been the leading funding source for bioscience in the world. Also, it is important to note that the NIH *does* fund research in other countries as well... However, it is also important to note that other countries are stepping up and the number of published papers in bioscience being published in other countries are on the increase. The next century is difficult to predict, but it would be safe to say that even over the next decade, the US will continue to dominate bioscience work and funding. The question is whether or not we have a commitment to maintain our lead in bioscience past this decade into the rest of the century.

Re:Not thinking in a big picture sense

[c6gunner]

What the hell? For one, you're misinterpreting the statistics. It seems like you made up your mind that scientific research is on the decline in the US, and only then went looking for info to back that claim.

From the article you linked:

In 1981, when the company began tracking the data, the United States accounted for 39.7 percent of the total number of papers published in the world (172,132 papers); the EU accounted for 32.3 percent (139,954 papers); and the Asia Pacific region accounted for 13 percent (56,644 papers). By 2004, the EU accounted for 38 percent of the total number of papers (292,067); the United States accounted for 33.3 percent (256,374); and the Asia Pacific region accounted for 25.3 percent of papers (195,001).

In other words, the total number of papers published in the US increased by 48% during this time period (172,132 to 256,374). A decrease in percentages does not equal a decrease in number. Considering that the EU has about 60% more people than does the US, they SHOULD be putting out a higher number of papers than the US. The reason for the unequal increase in papers published by the US and EU respectively should be clear to anyone who's lived in Europe; the US has always had a fairly effective, and reasonably accessible education system, whereas in many parts of the EU, education was limited, and economic difficulties meant a much higher dropout rate due to the need to begin working at an early age. Similar reasons explain the jump in papers coming out of Asia. If Europe and Asia were producing the same number of papers per capita as the US, the figures should looks something like this:

US: 256,374
EU: 401,015
Asia: 3,197,401

So obviously, the US is still way ahead of the curve, and Asia is still FAR behind. Europe's doing a decent job of catching up, but I don't expect to see them surpass the US any time soon.

Wikiscience

[MyLongNickName]

*Sigh* Wiki is a wonderful tool for certain applications. When you want breadth of knowledge and are willing to accept a certain amount of uncertainty on accuracy of knowledge, wiki is a great tool. When you want narrow focus and little uncertaintly on accuracy, wiki sucks. Using wiki for this is like using .NET for low level, speed intensive applications.... a great tool for the wrong job.

I do not want to read a science paper put together by a committee. Can you imagine a natural selection paper written by the masses? Truth is not a democratic sport. I'd rather read two papers contradicting each other than one paper written by those two parties. IN the former case, I can easily compare and contract. In the later, I am forced to sift through revision histories to try to piece together original intent.

Add in the "lol, jews" camp, and we are back in the middle ages.

Re:Wikiscience

[Jerf]

You probably shouldn't read "Wiki" literally in the modern sense. Read it as "something like a Wiki, suitably modified for scientific application".

I think the key idea here isn't so much the "Wiki", but the idea that you can turn the fundamental unit of "science" away from "the paper" to something more dynamic and electronic. While you don't want to lower the standards (or at least less trustworthy material should be clearly labelled as such), this can correct some serious issues that "the paper" has:

• Constrained by physical publishing. I'll admit I don't have much academic experience, but every published paper that I've seen the "inside" of, it turns out there's a lot more good material the research generated, there's just no space to publish it, and the author has to pick and choose.
• Difficulty of publishing original data: A standardized way to post the source data would be useful.
• Static: Once the paper is published, that's it. It would be nice that if somebody replicated the experiment, say, there would be a standardized way to "attach" that information to the original paper. Thus would each "paper" also become a statement of how thoroughly (or incompletely!) attested the result is. A paper could also play host to a "conversation" of sorts about the result, eventually resulting in further refinements and such.

All of these problems of course have some solutions in the current world (or so I would presume), but a (semi-)unified*, standardized system would make the current solutions look primitive and piecemeal.

And again, I emphasize that while it might not be all bad to allow "unverified" claims to be added by a broad crowd (perhaps not everyone), I would never suggest not using standards or peer review and clearly labelling what has been reviewed to what extent. However, the scientific process can benefit from borrowing from the Wiki, the discussion board, and a few other formalized, standardized pieces of the Internet and other electronic communication techniques without losing its essential nature, indeed, enhancing it.

(*: Personally, if I were designing this, I'd support a very distributed system that would only be "semi-unified", based on open protocols and data descriptions that would allow anyone to host their own "journal" (mostly universities and university departments), and to try to encourage people to be open with their data and such so that it would be easy to negotiate backup/mirror agreements and such, allowing one to do away with "the journals" while still being very aware that certain people and groups will have enhanced reputation and this would need to be dealt with directly. This would be a lot of fun to design.)

Don't count out religious influences.

[Anonymous Coward]

We must also consider the effects religion will have on scientific advancement.

He speaks of biology. What we see today is religious individuals and organizations taking a very active stand against such research. This is especially true in the United States. Christian fundamentalist groups have had a truly astounding effect. Between getting religious dogma (in the form of 'intelligent design') taught in science classes, and the outright prevention of stem cell research, they have become the greatest hinderence to scientific progress.

We will likely see such progress happen anyways, however. It just won't be in America. Countries like China, and to a lesser extent India, will soon become the hubs of scientific research. Instead of them sending their best and brightest students to America for an education, we may see it go the other way.

Re:Don't count out religious influences.

[TubeSteak]

Freedom isn't necessary for scientific advancement.

What is necessary is a willingness to disclose the results of scientific studies.

It doesn't matter how free the U.S. of A. or China is, if their Governments put all the really interesting and useful research under the lock and key of National Security.

Think about the advanced studies being done in bio-warfare and materials sciences that will never come to light, because no one wants to give their 'enemy' a military advantage.

If a central buracracy has to approve your research, there is no chance unapplied research will happen.

Ummm... you must be new here. You obviously have no clue what kind of rediculous studies get funded by central bureaucracy. Go read up on the kind of things the Soviet Russians did research on.

bio vs. IT and social change vs. science progress

[drDugan]

I think he's wrong about Biology beiung next. Not because it's not interesting (it is), but because we still have so much farther we can go with IT. Each new tech area gets overhyped and then crashes expectations, then the reality catches up with the hype. Only now, in the last 1-2 year have we seen an emergence of the real power of the Internet (and it's long-hyped power) being realized by large numbers (%'s) of people. By "real power" I mean structured data encoding for all useful information - persistent global connectivity enabling virtual organizations - and (what I call "The greatest shift") the realization by society that information is more valuble than physical goods.

The next 20 years will one of vast social change, enabled by computing and communications technology. The social change will be driven by a realization that basic physical goods to support life are of such low value compared to information that it's in the best interest of large social groups (governements) to feed and house people effectively for free - and harness their THINKING ability toward global value instead of their more classic PRODUCTION value. This will radically alter our view of work and production. Mental participation at a basic level will sustain large groups of people at minimal levels (housing,food) for the value that simple participation will generate.

In terms of biology and biotech - yes, it's exciting - but by comparison to the aboe radical changes in our society, the technology for biological change is still really really hard. We don't have the ability to probe deeply enough, the systems we measure are noisy and all unique, so while there will be advances, they will not shift our lives so much os the shift happeneing because everyone is talking. Spending 30 minutes looking at Myspace will give you an indication of the amount of energy the NEXT generation will be willing to put into connecting online.

Re:NIH funding

[BWJones]

People and companies will do research so long as it remains profitable to do so.

Ahhhh, spoken like a person who has no real understanding of the history of science. Are you aware that essentially *all* applied scientific knowledge and applications are derived from basic science research? Nuclear power, the Internet, genetics, medicine, and more. Applied research that corporations and private companies are interested in is generally applied research that is only made possible after the basic science work has been done.

Also, on what do you make this prediction that it'd take 10 years to repair the "damage" anyways?

This is based on the number of existing grants that have been failed to be renewed from senior investigators due to reduced funding, the number of jobs that have been eliminated by even recent cuts this year (many labs have had their grants cut by 20% this year alone), and the number of post-docs that have failed to achieve more permanent academic positions in the past few years.

Re:Is there future to humanity?

[marcosdumay]

"And all 6 billion people in the world cannot be thought workers."

Why not?

Re:Tough to predict

[Shihar]

Science makes bold predictions, and it moves at a snails pace. We're not any different than people who lived 20 years ago, just like people who lived 20 years ago were not that different than people who lived 40 years ago. Consider how many major changes there have been in the past 100 years? Automobiles, television, and airplains. If you then throw out those 100 years, and go back from 1800 to 1500, how much change was there in 300 years? Someone invents gunpowder and that is the major catalyst of change.

Science make bold and utterly false prediction, just to have some other upstart technology steal the show. Sure, we don't have flying cars. We do have a world wide communications grid though that is having rapidly changing society in ways that a few flying cars couldn't even begin to compete with. The reason why science seems slow these days is because we are so damn used to change.

Few people even remember what it was like to look up information before Google. A lot of people forget that less then 10 years ago you couldn't instant get in contact with anyone you wanted via a cell phone. While we were waiting for rocket ships, a significantly more profound technology in the guise of the Internet and communications technology made itself at home. Multinational corporations used to be disjointed heads only vaguely sharing the same financial body, now they are well oiled machines that operate with ease across thousands of miles.

There absolutely have been profound changes in just the past 20 years. Our society is being remolded in reshaped by technology at a blinding speed. The only reason why we can look back with a 'ho-hum' attitude is that one of the changes this technology has made to our society is a near complete acceptance of constant change. Most people complain that nothing change all the while ignoring the fact that they get pissed off when someone leaves their cell phone off or can't find an address or a movie time without using the Internet.

The future is here and we are running head long into it faster and faster. Open your eyes to the science and society that is rapidly changing around you and stop looking for flying cars.

Re:Wikiscience: see this post

[Thangodin]

Actually, Wikipedia has the same level of accuracy of any of the major encyclopedias (Britannica, etc.) And Wikipedia entries are peer reviewed, since it's pretty hard to conceal a bad entry on a public forum. Scientific journals typically have a very small review group, who simply may not have time to properly review them or confirm their validity. The result have been some very embarrassing and truly horrendous articles; in fact, as many of two thirds of all papers related to drug research have later turned out to be false. And there are fairly simple mechanisms for preventing wackos from posting trash on your wiki.

Painfully Obvious

[theolein]

The article wasn't a very good one; it did cover a topic not often covered - scientific method itself - but it didn't really say anything that wouldn't be fairly obvious to anyone who half way understands what he was talking about. It is obvious that current systems and practices will get better and more universal (his so called hyperdata where more powerful systems simply can correlate more data). What is not obvious is that the next 50 years will be one glorious boom of improvement. Although the world has managed to avoid a nuclear war in the last 50 years, there is no saying that there will not be one in the next 50 years, say between China and the US over Taiwan. Yugoslavia showed that it doesn't take much to turn neighbours into mass murderers.

A big economic meltdown could do it too. Or a major bird flu epidemic. Or plain simple glabl warming with major storms, flooding, and droughts. The challenges haven't gotten smaller.

He didn't mention the dark ages, where there wasn't much in the way of development for over 500 years from 500AD onwards after the fall of Rome. It could happen again.