Slashdot Mirror
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."
Hell is not other people; it is yourself. - Ludwig Wittgenstein
the new century will be the century of Biology;
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.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Seems to me that as time goes on, the more quickly things change. This is true for pretty much anything, not just science and tech. Maybe you can predict what the next 5 or 10 years will be like, but I don't think you can claim that "The new century will be the century of Biology." With such a high rate of change, it's likely that there will be a radical change within the next decade. At which point, people will then make a new prediction for the rest of the century.
End transmission.
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.
*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.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
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.
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.
Can you imagine the invasion of privacy that would be required to get that kind of data on that many people?
Sure, they can match the cigarettes you buy when you use your bank card
They would have to monitor 100,000 people, 24/7 and record EVERYTHING from where you worked, live, travelled to what you ate and where you bought it (and where it was produced and what chemicals were used on it).
And that won't even allow you to try to isolate the variables. Once you get into multiple variables (dosage, exposure rate, etc), you don't have a valid experiment anymore.
He's confused "science" with "demographics".
Why not?
Rethinking email
Not to bash biology and medicine, but we need breakthru's in physics and AI to progress to the next stage. We need phyz to break free of oil, and AI to allow things such as solar farms and efficient remote construction in space.
No, the physics to 'break free of oil' are pretty well set, it's now more in engineering, to make it cost-effective and practical. "AI's" possibly, but you're assuming cheap ground-to-space launching to begin with, and the issues of getting power back from space - and no, it's not as simplistic a solution as you might think.
Oil isn't just for energy. It's also a basic feedstock for the chemical industry. That's where biology will be important. Production of feedstock chemicals, as well as alternatives for fuels are just a part of what will be happening.
Biology right now is where physics was almost a century ago. Theoretical boundaries, and the tools to actually test them are now coming onto the scene. The practical and ethical sides are still being developed. A little over 20 years ago, if I wanted to sequence a gene, I was looking at months, if not years of work to do it. Now, it doesn't take much time at all. Determining what it does, and how it does it is now the tough part. This is followed by the part of deciding what you're going to do with it - or if you should do anything.
A lack of government research should actually open up doors for private research.
I should point out that when basic research is privatized, there will be much less incentive for rare medical defects to be investigated. If there is not an economic incentive, then the work would not be done. It should also be mentioned that there are many profound discoveries and improvements of understanding of basic science that have been made as a result of the investigation of rare genetic defects. These discoveries have been applicable to other more general problems as a result and would never have been made if the basic science research had not been funded.
So, you could write off much of our understanding of the molecular biology of genetics which took some years for companies to even understand how to exploit for profit. Where would we be do you think if there were no government funding of basic science research?
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
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.
> If you see Moorse's law as applied to electronics
Moorse's law: the number of people who know Moorse code is halving every decade.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Please don't read this and think it is in anyway representative of science or scientific method. The only value of this article is a demonstration of the current devaluation of science. Not only does someone with no college degree feel able to comment, in a moronic way, about the current status and future of science, but people take notice of his addled opinions.
There is a deadly mixture of the meaningless "Kelly chronicled a sequence of new recursive devices in science...", the statement of the obvious, "Technology is, in its essence, new ways of thinking", the silly "We retain reptilian reflexes deep in our minds (fight or flight)" and the irrelevant "Information is growing by 66% per year while physical production grows by only 7% per year".