Science in the 21st Century

Reflected Institute
Originally uploaded by William Spaetzel

Right now I'm sitting in a session about Open Access in science at the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo.

I'm surrounded by scientists. I'm not a scientist. But I'm interested in science. And I'm interested in open access. And, more than anything, I'm interested in technology and culture in the 21st century, which is ultimately what this conference is about.

Although focussed on science, the learnings here could be applied to any industry. Here, it just happens to be academia, where, oddly enough, people are quite resistant to sharing their fruits of their educational labour. Being IN academia, wouldn't you think they would be super interested in making their research, their intellectual fruit, available for the public's education? I would have thought so. But it's not necessarily true.

Academia is really a totally new world for me. I've been learning a lot about the culture since working at MaRS and even more so since dating a research scientist.

I'm not saying they're all resistant. Not at all. In fact, the people I'm surrounded by in this room are all in favour of open access, collaboration and even dumbing-down the research in the form of blogs for public consumption and participation. Today, and all week, actually, during this conference, they are preaching to the converted, it seems.

So what is the point? Why are the likes of Chad Orzel, creator of Uncertain Principles (read "Talking to My Dog About Science: Weblogs and Public Outreach") trying to convince the convinced that we should be sharing our information?

Because of this. Because of what you're reading right now.

Because people like me and people like him and possibly Timo Hannay, the Publishing Director of Nature.com who also gave an excellent presentation this morning and sat with me at lunch yesterday, will write about this. And that people like you will read it.

And maybe you're not in an industry in which open access is important. More likely, you just don't KNOW that you're in an industry in which open access and sharing information and knowledge is important. But likely you ARE. Maybe you are a scientist, but maybe you're a farmer or a an engineer. It doesn't matter.

Maybe you'll read this and you'll look up the conference abstracts or proceedings and you'll think maybe you'll do some little thing different. Maybe you'll post your paper in PubMed, maybe you'll start a blog, maybe you'll open up your research to the public and let them participate from home, counting fish in their river or tracking the rainfall or whatever. Maybe you'll upload your preliminary findings or photos and make them part of the creative commons. Or maybe you'll just decide that you could really learn something from a scientist in a different discipline and read THEIR stuff and comment -- adding to the context of their information.

And that will be enough.