what will steady state academic physics look like?
Patricia M. Schwarz
of academic science. (See "The Big Crunch" by David Goodstein, available at
http://www.caltech.edu/~goodstein/)
Specifically: what will a steady-state academic physics department look like,
if the total number of physics professors can only remain constant in the
future?
Right now we need grad students for cheap teaching labor: grading, overseeing
beginning labs, giving recitations, doing all the grunt work of science
education in the universities.
And some professors do need grad students for their own research, whether it
be laboratory assistance or theory sounding boards.
Is their a critical throughput of graduate students through a physics
department, below which the system of science education will suffer
some deleterious or unwanted effects?
If we need some critical throughput of very advanced students, then what
do we *do* with them once they are "put through"?
Will the ancient tenure hierarchy survive this coming social transition
period? For sure the ancients with tenure will survive it - but is the
traditional tenure hierarchy in academic science an efficient way to
distribute limited resources for basic research?
Tenure is good for many important reasons - it gives people the academic
freedom to rebel and be unconventional without fear of reprisal after
they survived having all the rebellious instincts scared out of them by
the process of getting tenure ;-) . (oops I meant that to be two
sentences not so escherian!)
But the traditional "tenure clock" is not family-friendly... especially
not to women but also to men who desire a larger degree of involvement
in child-rearing and family connection that their forefathers could afford
while building their careers.
Some education reform thinkers are saying that teaching of the future
will be more like management of self-teaching via educational software
and cooperative learning, and less like the old authoritarian model
with Herr Doktor Professor at the top of the knowledge hegemony pyramid.
Suupose everyone leaves grad school with an Internet account and a home
workstation with appropriate connectivity.
Why even have academic science any more? Maybe "the academy" will disperse
into a feisty nerve-wrcking virtual academy where new modes of authorship
and so-called "peer review" will have to be developed. (Those who have
experienced a one year turnaround time from a referee, raise your mice
and repeat after me: the peer review system is collapsing...)
I have this picture in my head: the Undoing of the Enlightenment
One aspect of the "scientific revolution" of those days was the
fortification of science into mighty Institutions and Academies that
were made impervious to entry by Undesirables - and the most Undesirable
of All was Woman.
Is there some big Complex Dynamics unravelling around us whereby the
undoing of that deliberate exclusion will also involve an undoing of the
fortifications of institutionalized science itself?
In the 17th century, women were able to achieve scientific learning
through three main channels: being a nun in a learned convent (they
did exist), being an aristocratic woman with a liberal father who hired
tutors like Leibniz and Descartes for his bright daughter, and being
a daughter of a man in a trade that practiced "science craft" such as
astronomy, natural history and so on.
The boundary between official science and private life became more
rigid and was formalized by the appearance of official hegemonies that
were protected by organizations like the Royal Society of London -
(and in turn protected scientists from the whims of the rich, to be fair)
The machanism of exclusion involved not only locking women out of the
forming structures, but also progressively devaluing all structures that
allowed women to participate even on a limited basis. This wasn't exactly
a coherent conspiracy, but related social and scientific movements did
wind up dismantling the convent system of women's education, the place of
aristocratic patronage in science, and the contract nature of observational
work in astronomy and biology.
But now it looks like those hegemonies are in the process of dissolving.
This week _Newsweek_ is telling us "No PhD's Need Apply". (Strange that this
is happening while women in America are finally enjoying substantial
access to academic science and getting our precious PhD's, denied to us
for almost the entire history of Western science!)
We are clearly in the middle of the beginning of something.
I am trying to envision how this "something" might look once it has
really happened.
Any thoughts, dreams, visions, poems, fears, polemics, linear logic
out there in this area?
-patricia
Matt McIrvin
Patricia M. Schwarz <patr...@cco.caltech.edu> wrote:
>
>Why even have academic science any more? Maybe "the academy" will disperse
>into a feisty nerve-wrcking virtual academy where new modes of authorship
>and so-called "peer review" will have to be developed. (Those who have
>experienced a one year turnaround time from a referee, raise your mice
>and repeat after me: the peer review system is collapsing...)
I seem to recall David Mermin having some interesting ideas about this
in _Physics Today_; I'm not sure he was thinking so much about doing
away with academies as doing away with journals, though. At the
moment, net-distributed preprints are of course becoming the primary
means of communication, but there's no peer review, which is OK as
long as everybody in the field knows everybody else, but less OK as
more people join in. There's a certain danger of the whole thing
turning into, well, sci.physics with TeX equations.
If I remember correctly, Mermin proposed a system hovering somewhere
between newsgroup moderation and movie reviews; the referees (perhaps
picked in some manner resembling journal referees, or in a more
anarchic manner, but there could be many, many more of them) rate the
papers they read, and you could choose to read only the papers above a
certain rating level, as you please. *Everything* gets distributed,
from outright crank literature to seminal papers, and the ultimate
decision to read the papers rests with the reader, with a certain
amount of guidance provided to drive the killfile.
This sort of thing could, now that I think about it, have radical
consequences, some of them good.
--
Matt 01234567 <-- Indent-o-Meter
McIrvin ^ Harnessing tab damage for peaceful ends!
john baez
>At the
>moment, net-distributed preprints are of course becoming the primary
>means of communication, but there's no peer review, which is OK as
>long as everybody in the field knows everybody else, but less OK as
>more people join in.
More people joining in? Maybe this won't be a problem, at least for a
while, since in fact the job market in physics means that more people
are, um, joining out. Recall that in the *really* old days there were
very few physicists and lots of communication was simply done by
personal letters.
Philip Gibbs
For theoretical physicist with access to the e-print archives and facilities
such as the SPIRES database on WWW the journal system is already obsolete
except to find papers over 3 years old. The hyperlinked citations and references
are far more revealing than anything a referee would have to say about a
paper. I wish these facilities had been available when I was doing my PhD.
I believe they are going to introduce a system soon which will allow
people to attach comments to a pre-print which would be moderated by the author.
If that works it should not be necessary to have referees at all.
As far as I can see the only reason people need to publish in journals is
to make their publication lists look respectable when they apply for new
positions. This is less true for mathematics papers than theoretical
physics where speculation is healthy and small errors are less of a problem.
As far as I know only Nuclear Physics and Physics Review Letters are introducing
on-line access to their journals (subscribers only) but it may be too little too
late to save them.
john baez
>As far as I know only Nuclear Physics and Physics Review Letters are
>introducing on-line access to their journals (subscribers only) but it
>may be too little too late to save them.
I certainly hope so! My greatest fear is that the journals will be fast
enough to cook up some way to charge exorbitant prices for what is now
freely accessible information on hep-th, etc.. I'll say a bit more
about this, and what people are doing to stop it, in the next Week's Finds.
Joseph C Wang
>workstation with appropriate connectivity.
>
>Why even have academic science any more? Maybe "the academy" will disperse
>into a feisty nerve-wrcking virtual academy where new modes of authorship
>and so-called "peer review" will have to be developed. (Those who have
>experienced a one year turnaround time from a referee, raise your mice
>and repeat after me: the peer review system is collapsing...)
Actually, I trying to get a "virtual academy" online right now. Look
at the web site http://uu-gna.mit.edu:8001/uu-gna/index.html
A fairly large motivation for what I am doing is that I've seen the
writing on the wall, and I'd like to set up an environment by which I
can keep doing astronomy after I get my Ph.D.
As far as what I think the steady-state academy will look like. I
suspect that instead of having research concentrated in a few academic
centers, that the internet will allow scientists to set up their own
practices much as doctors or lawyers do now. There will also be a lot
of "amateur" astronomers and physicists whose primary job isn't
astronomy or physics, but who can keep up with the latest research via
the internet and do cutting edge astronomy and physics as a "hobby."
>I am trying to envision how this "something" might look once it has
>really happened.
>
>Any thoughts, dreams, visions, poems, fears, polemics, linear logic
>out there in this area?
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Joseph Wang The opinions expressed here should not be considered
j...@mit.edu official policy of the Globewide Network Academy
explicitly unless marked as such.
Bruce Scott TK
>workstation with appropriate connectivity.
>Why even have academic science any more? Maybe "the academy" will disperse
>into a feisty nerve-wrcking virtual academy where new modes of authorship
>and so-called "peer review" will have to be developed. (Those who have
>experienced a one year turnaround time from a referee, raise your mice
>and repeat after me: the peer review system is collapsing...)
A pretty cool idea, and I totally agree about the review system. One
problem with the self sufficient science you imply is that several really
interesting problems need cutting-edge hardware, which is very expensive.
This will be the case for the foreseeable future. (I will ignore the
usual uninformed sentiment that computational physics isn't physics.)
In article <3blkle$5...@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU>,
j...@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Joseph C Wang) replied:
> Actually, I trying to get a "virtual academy" online right now. Look
> at the web site http://uu-gna.mit.edu:8001/uu-gna/index.html
>
> A fairly large motivation for what I am doing is that I've seen the
> writing on the wall, and I'd like to set up an environment by which I
> can keep doing astronomy after I get my Ph.D.
>
> As far as what I think the steady-state academy will look like. I
> suspect that instead of having research concentrated in a few academic
> centers, that the internet will allow scientists to set up their own
> practices much as doctors or lawyers do now. There will also be a lot
> of "amateur" astronomers and physicists whose primary job isn't
> astronomy or physics, but who can keep up with the latest research via
> the internet and do cutting edge astronomy and physics as a "hobby."
This will not be possible until the funding agencies accept it as serious
science. Until then the Robert Kraichnans will be the exception, not the
rule. Don't forget that most scientists earn their living through the
service of teaching (which is correct, IMHO), even if many shirk it to
whatever extent possible.
Businesses who emply scientists as consultants will continue to require
an on-site presence in order to control anything that comes out of the
research, for proprietary reasons (don't laugh until _you've_ had to sign
a bunch of non-disclosure agreements just for a 5-hour seminar and
discussion visit!).
Patricia M. Schwarz <patr...@cco.caltech.edu> again:
>I am trying to envision how this "something" might look once it has
>really happened.
>Any thoughts, dreams, visions, poems, fears, polemics, linear logic
>out there in this area?
The fundamental reality faced by anyone wanting to do science seriously
enough that it is at least close to a full-time activity, is that one
must be able to live from it. The present age of civil funding, as
distasteful as many of its attributes are, is the first in which people
have been able to conduct full-time investigations without either being
independently wealthy or having the benefit of a wealthy patron. Making
one's living from teaching seems to me to be the only way to avoid this,
and then only if one is a pure analyticist. But the experiments and
computational facilities must still be paid for. Even 100k USD/year
isn't going to go very far in many cases.
I don't know about you but I cannot afford even a small workstation
on my own.
--
Gruss,
Dr Bruce Scott The deadliest bullshit is
Max-Planck-Institut fuer Plasmaphysik odorless and transparent
b...@ipp-garching.mpg.de -- W Gibson
Joseph C Wang
Bruce Scott TK <b...@ipp-garching.mpg.de> wrote:
>> As far as what I think the steady-state academy will look like. I
>> suspect that instead of having research concentrated in a few academic
>> centers, that the internet will allow scientists to set up their own
>> practices much as doctors or lawyers do now. There will also be a lot
>> of "amateur" astronomers and physicists whose primary job isn't
>> astronomy or physics, but who can keep up with the latest research via
>> the internet and do cutting edge astronomy and physics as a "hobby."
>
>This will not be possible until the funding agencies accept it as serious
>science. Until then the Robert Kraichnans will be the exception, not the
>rule.
I don't think that will be too difficult. In principle, an "amateur"
can submit a proposal for computer time, for telescope time, or
journal articles. The reason that "amateurs" don't is that they don't
have access to the procedural information on how to submit these
applications, and also they don't have access to the social networks
that exists within science departments and which are necessary to keep
up with the latest research and to figure out what to write a proposal
on.
I think that the internet will change both. First of all, eventually
all the forms you will need to fill out for telescope or computer time
will be on the net, and "amateurs" will have as much access to them as
"professionals." Second, it is only a matter of time before
colloqiums, journal clubs, and entire conferences end up on the net.
Once that happens it will be possible for someone to be in any part of
the world and still have access to a "virtual department."
>Don't forget that most scientists earn their living through the
>service of teaching (which is correct, IMHO), even if many shirk it to
>whatever extent possible.
That's the situation now. I can see a world in which a lot of
scientists spend part of their time being investment bankers or
computer programmers or Swiss patent clerks, and do science part time.
John Sidles
>>> of "amateur" astronomers and physicists whose primary job isn't
>>> astronomy or physics, but who can keep up with the latest research via
>>> the internet and do cutting edge astronomy and physics as a "hobby."
>>
Dear Physics Folks...
It can be done.
I graduated with a degree in elementary particle theory (1982), and
immediately ran into two problems: (1) I wasn't very good at it, and
(2) particle theory jobs were vanishingly scarce back then even for
people who were good!
Now my "real job" involves research in orthopaedic biomechanics.
As an avocation, I publish articles on magnetic resonance force
microscopy. I have much more fun as an avocational physicist than
I ever did as a professional. By the way, "avocational physicist"
is more precise terminology than "amateur physicist."
So it can be done! Stephen Maturin is my hero! Orthopaedic surgeons
are my Jack Aubreys! And the UW Department of Orthopaedics is my
blessed Surprise!
>>This will not be possible until the funding agencies accept it as serious
>>science.
Yes, you can obtain funding as an "avocational physicist." The path to
funding is the same as in academia: (1) study an important subject, (2)
get an idea, (3) publish articles, (4) do experiments, (5) give talks, (6)
persuade other scientists to work in the field; these people will become
your colleagues, reviewers, and rivals. Only then will you have a good
chance to be funded.
There are no secrets; the path is open to all. There are no guarantees of
success; in fact you will probably fail again and again. But as an
avocational physicist, the grinding pressure to conform to academic norms
is reduced; no tenure clock is running; and your articles are evaluated
mainly on technical merit and clarity of presentation. Like my father
used to say, "What more do you want? Egg in your beer?"
You will find that avocational physics is just as much work (or even more)
than a regular academic career. As they say, a writer is a person who
writes, so if you want to be a writer, glue your butt to the chair and
start writing. The more you write, the better the chance that you will
(after several thousand hours) become a good writer. The same is true of
any creative endeavor.
>
>>Don't forget that most scientists earn their living through the
>>service of teaching (which is correct, IMHO), even if many shirk it to
>>whatever extent possible.
>
>That's the situation now. I can see a world in which a lot of
>scientists spend part of their time being investment bankers or
>computer programmers or Swiss patent clerks, and do science part time.
>
You bet !! In fact, much of vertebrate biology already operates
this way. Just head for any wilderness area and you will find
scruffy folks doing their research thing, and loving it.
I would enjoy hearing from other avocational physicists, meaning
anyone who (1) has a nonphysics career, and (2) over a period of
years has published a fair number of physics-related articles
purely for love.
Good luck to all you physics wannabees out there! JAS
---------------------------------------------------------------------
John A. Sidles, Ph.D. email: sid...@u.washington.edu
Associate Professor phone: (206) 543-3690
Department of Orthopaedics RK-10 FAX: (206) 685-3139
School of Medicine PAGE: (206) 989-9462
University of Washington
Seattle WA 98195 USA
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Carr
>
>Specifically: what will a steady-state academic physics department look like,
>if the total number of physics professors can only remain constant in the
>future?
My own opinion is that it will not remain constant. Since the research
dollars that make lower teaching loads attractive are still shrinking,
the current faculty-student ratio at many large universities may not
be maintained. Not all retirements will be filled. But the premise
is correct in that the future will be like the more recent past
where very few PhDs become faculty at research universities.
What will determine the answer to some of the other questions is
whether a market for physicists in industry will come back. If
not, there will be a drastic decline in grad students unless the
foreign students continue to come with the goal of going home to
a job after earning their degree.
>Right now we need grad students for cheap teaching labor: grading, overseeing
>beginning labs, giving recitations, doing all the grunt work of science
>education in the universities.
Much of that can be done by the top undergrad physics majors. More of
it (like recitations) will be done by faculty with a higher teaching
load, or with computers if those systems prove effective.
>And some professors do need grad students for their own research, whether it
>be laboratory assistance or theory sounding boards.
>
>Is their a critical throughput of graduate students through a physics
>department, below which the system of science education will suffer
>some deleterious or unwanted effects?
What has already happened is that faculty today do not have the level
of assistance that faculty had in the 1960s. It is hard to match the
productivity of a person who had 6 or 8 or even 10 graduate students
working at the same time. The senior students helped train the new
ones, and the efficiency was much higher than can be sustained today.
>If we need some critical throughput of very advanced students, then what
>do we *do* with them once they are "put through"?
That begs the question. If there is no market, you won't have them.
Or, to be more precise, *you* will have them at Caltech but you might
have to match the pay of some other school desperate to keep up
enrollment, while many other places will not have any.
How did Yogi Berra put it?
>Will the ancient tenure hierarchy survive this coming social transition
>period? For sure the ancients with tenure will survive it - but is the
>traditional tenure hierarchy in academic science an efficient way to
>distribute limited resources for basic research?
There are already discussions about abolishing tenure in Florida. It
is very likely that our new 10th university will not have a tenure
system. Given the market, of course, they should have no trouble
finding takers for those jobs.
But tenure has nothing to do with how the resources are distributed.
Just because you have tenure is no guarantee that you can get a
grant funded. However, the lack of grant money can make it very
hard to get tenure, since right now it is the money that talks.
>Suupose everyone leaves grad school with an Internet account and a home
>workstation with appropriate connectivity.
Suppose everyone has that whether they are in grad school or not?
Not so far away, actually, since our local phone company is network
ready (for a price) and our local cable company is ready to compete
on that price *and* on providing local phone service too. We can
run slip now, and ISDN or ethernet is available. That is how some
local providers sell full internet access (WWW via mosaic, the
whole enchilada) to the public and business right now.
Your idea of a virtual academy is a good one. Where this has been
tried, to some extent, at national labs or some campus research
groups, the problem is that there are some things that require
meeting face to face informally and you lose something when someone
only works from home. There are some communication issues, but with
a camera on your Indigo at home, some of these things are feasible
today in a way that was impossible just a few years ago.
>I have this picture in my head: the Undoing of the Enlightenment
Interesting picture. No more ivory towers. But part of it might be
a return to that era where there were no funding agencies and the
work was done by people with their own resources on their own time.
>One aspect of the "scientific revolution" of those days was the
>fortification of science into mighty Institutions and Academies that
>were made impervious to entry by Undesirables - and the most Undesirable
>of All was Woman.
I understand your point, but I think there are other groups that have
been more under-represented due to similar cultural constraints. The
question is: will a revolution such as is described above increase or
decrease access by those groups? There is no obvious answer, I think.
We are talking about resources that are not available in impoverished
areas, while schools provide a mechanism to get out of a community
like Gretna, FL, (a place that was unimaginable to me having grown
up in urban areas) for people that don't have a phone let alone a
computer connection (or a library that has one).
--
James A. Carr <j...@scri.fsu.edu> | "The old he-coon walks just
http://www.scri.fsu.edu/~jac | before the light of day."
Supercomputer Computations Res. Inst. | - Gov. (still) Lawton Chiles to
Florida State, Tallahassee FL 32306 | Jeb Bush during second debate
Jim Carr
>between newsgroup moderation and movie reviews; the referees (perhaps
>picked in some manner resembling journal referees, or in a more
>anarchic manner, but there could be many, many more of them) rate the
>papers they read, and you could choose to read only the papers above a
>certain rating level, as you please. *Everything* gets distributed,
A system like this, but without anonymity, is being discussed for
the hep-lat archive. The problem is that you might have to start
carrying more professional liability insurance if your rating were
to cause some harm through an error on your part.
There is also the problem that accepted, and thus copyrighted, papers
can only be kept on the archive today because LANL can certify that
they are not competing with any commercial enterprise. When the
journals go on-line, this will no longer be true and this system
will probably have to change in ways that are not clear right now.
Philip Gibbs
> In article <3bj6qi$4...@gap.cco.caltech.edu>,
> Patricia M. Schwarz <patr...@cco.caltech.edu> wrote:
> >Suupose everyone leaves grad school with an Internet account and a home
> >workstation with appropriate connectivity.
> >
> >Why even have academic science any more? Maybe "the academy" will disperse
> >into a feisty nerve-wrcking virtual academy where new modes of authorship
> >and so-called "peer review" will have to be developed. (Those who have
> >experienced a one year turnaround time from a referee, raise your mice
> >and repeat after me: the peer review system is collapsing...)
>
>
> suspect that instead of having research concentrated in a few academic
> centers, that the internet will allow scientists to set up their own
> practices much as doctors or lawyers do now. There will also be a lot
> of "amateur" astronomers and physicists whose primary job isn't
> astronomy or physics, but who can keep up with the latest research via
> the internet and do cutting edge astronomy and physics as a "hobby."
>
There have always been people doing useful science as amateurs, for example
amateur astronomers have often been the first to spot new comets and
supernovae. There have also been a few people who do science professionally
but outside the establishment supported by spin-offs from their research,
like Jacques Cousteau, even Fred Hoyle does it these days.
I agree that there are going to be many more of them in the future. There
are an increasing number of competent scientists who leave academia on
completion of their PhD because they do not find the low pay and insecurity
of a career in science very attractive. Many of them find well paid work in
finance or computing and have regular access to the internet. Soon we will
all have easy access from our homes.
It is becoming possible for amateurs to contribute in areas where they had
no chance in the past. There is no longer a problem keeping in touch with
the literature because it is available on the net and you can publish there
too. An amateur can easily get conference info on the net and apply to
participate if he/she wishes to make more direct contact with other
scientists, or they can collaborate through e-mail.
For sciences which need computers there is no longer a problem. Ten years ago
I did my PhD in Lattice gauge theories and was lucky to get a few dozen hours
cpu time on the first Cray XMP to arrive in Europe. If I wanted to repeat the
calculation now I could do so on a Pentium which I could leave running for
weeks without cost. All kinds of science can be done with computer simulations.
There is really no problem for people to do science of all sorts as an amateur.
A budding amateur marine biologist can go scuba diving in Norway and easily do
useful survey work that professionals have not covered. There are many more
examples. People have increasingly easy access to technology and travel
opportunities which were once the preserve of professionals. They are also
better educated and have more spare time.
Someone might say that some areas of science can never be touched by
amateurs because you need big funding for, e.g., deep space astronomy or experimental
particle physics, but suppose they make the data from observatories and
experiments available on the net. Then anybody will be able to download it for
analysis on their Pentiums.
Yes there is going to be an increasing number of amateur scientists but of
course they will coexist with academia. You can also count me as an amateur
scientist in theoretical physics but now I have to get back to my real job.
Phil
Jim Carr
>can submit a proposal for computer time, for telescope time, or
>journal articles.
Indeed, they do. I found it quite interesting that the current issue
of Science News has a major article on a guy who has pursued his
g = T + t version of general relativity while working as an EE
for Hamamatsu. Interesting issues there, by the way; I await a
thread on it by our resident GR experts.
> The reason that "amateurs" don't is that they don't
>have access to the procedural information on how to submit these
>applications,
I can't see where this is the case. This is certainly common
knowledge. All you have to do is read the Federal Register for
proposal info or the submission info in each journal.
> and also they don't have access to the social networks
>that exists within science departments and which are necessary to keep
>up with the latest research and to figure out what to write a proposal
>on.
The social network is more important as a sounding board for new
ideas than anything else. The latest research is in journals and
in e-prints.
>I think that the internet will change both. First of all, eventually
>all the forms you will need to fill out for telescope or computer time
>will be on the net, and "amateurs" will have as much access to them as
>"professionals."
It already has changed them. I think all of the things you describe
already exist, and there are many internet access providers that
allow you to get at them. Everything at the NSF is on-line, for
example, accessed via gopher.
> Second, it is only a matter of time before
>colloqiums, journal clubs, and entire conferences end up on the net.
>Once that happens it will be possible for someone to be in any part of
>the world and still have access to a "virtual department."
This is where it gets expensive.
This is all available today (you can get full bandwidth, enough to run
an 'mbone' link) for a price. Here I think the local phone company
charges about $250 per month for a basic level of access to their
loop. Several local providers can give you SLIP access to the link
they maintain for a small monthly fee plus hourly connect, but that
is not enough to sustain an acceptable 'mbone' link.
The ongoing privatization of the internet will increase availability
but, except for what is done by freenets, at a price. What is most
likely to happen in the near term is an extension of cable TV to
include full bandwidth links driven by your TV and a remote control
mouse in a Mosaic-like environment that will access all of the new
commercial activities on the internet. Universal availability will
drop the price for the sort of connections we need to improve our
connections from home -- just as it did for phones. Remember that
a phone-poll once mis-read a national election since only republicans
could afford phones.
This is happening much faster than most people are aware of. With a
large community freenet, this town is better connected than most, but
text-terminal access will be as old as punched cards in a few years.
Just look at what politicians are up to if you doubt me. The full
"Contract with America" is on the house gopher, and they have made
a promise to post every bill for 10 days before it is voted on. The
politicians are preparing to use this technology to get around the
media to reach the people directly in the same way they used talk
radio, while commercial ventures see this as superior to catalog sales.
Paul Budnik
: There is also the problem that accepted, and thus copyrighted, papers
: can only be kept on the archive today because LANL can certify that
: they are not competing with any commercial enterprise. When the
: journals go on-line, this will no longer be true and this system
: will probably have to change in ways that are not clear right now.
This raises some important and timely problems. In the past anyone in
the developed world had free access to all the scientific knowledge
man had accumulated. This was relatively simple to do when
access involved looking for a book in a card catalogue
and then finding it. Today access to information can mean searching a
large data base and that is expensive through commercial services.
Scientific knowledge is not anyones property. It is the collective birth
right of every human being. We need to think hard about how we can
extend the notion of the public library into the information age
without destroying the economic incentives that are so important to
advancing the technology.
Paul Budnik
Emory F. Bunn
>This raises some important and timely problems. In the past anyone in
>the developed world had free access to all the scientific knowledge
>man had accumulated. This was relatively simple to do when
>access involved looking for a book in a card catalogue
>and then finding it. Today access to information can mean searching a
>large data base and that is expensive through commercial services.
What an romantic notion. When exactly was this golden age of
universal access to information?
"Anyone" in the above paragraph really means anyone who has access to
a large academic library which is willing to shell out vast sums of
money for books and journal subscriptions. In practice, this means
researchers at universities and essentially no one else. As things go
on line, they become far more accessible to people outside of this
elite group. Compare the cost of searching a large data base with a
commercial service to the cost of subscribing to a few of your
favorite journals.
>Scientific knowledge is not anyones property. It is the collective birth
>right of every human being. We need to think hard about how we can
>extend the notion of the public library into the information age
>without destroying the economic incentives that are so important to
>advancing the technology.
Absolutely right. But the expansion of on-line information is not a
barrier to this goal. Rather, it provides the first opportunity in
history to come close to achieving it.
-Ted
Michael Kagalenko
Philip Gibbs <ph...@galilee.eurocontrol.fr> wrote:
] ..........................
]For sciences which need computers there is no longer a problem. Ten years ago
]cpu time on the first Cray XMP to arrive in Europe. If I wanted to repeat the
]calculation now I could do so on a Pentium which I could leave running for
I am sure you would find a new, interesting phenomena or two :-)
]All kinds of science can be done with computer simulations.
] .........................................
]Someone might say that some areas of science can never be touched by
]amateurs because you need big funding for, e.g., deep space astronomy or experimental
]particle physics, but suppose they make the data from observatories and
]experiments available on the net. Then anybody will be able to download it for
]analysis on their Pentiums.
^^^^^^^^
Think of all the exciting, totally counter-intuitive results those
amateurs will contibute to the treasure chest of knowledge :-)
Tim Oertel
Not absolutely right. I love the idea of every single human being educated,
but I don't believe it is their 'birth right' to have access to all this
information. This might be getting a bit far afield, but "scientific
knowledge" is the creators property. That individual human created it. If
you duplicate it, then it is also your property. (I don't want to talk
about copyrights or patents, etc.) If YOU CHOOSE to give it to the world,
that is your right. No other human being can lay claim to your thoughts or
knowledge.
I think that you should pay for access to that information, but as more and
more is easily available. Consequently, the more you have available, the
cheaper it is. (Likewise with age.) I think you should pay for it, but I
want it to be cheap.
---> Tim
"Why should I be content to simply live in this world when I,
as a human being, can create it?"
Paul Budnik
: In article <3c00di$o...@agate.berkeley.edu>, Emory F. Bunn <ted@physics2> wrote:
: >In article <3bvgcd$2...@mtnmath.mtnmath.com> pa...@mtnmath.mtnmath.com
: > (Paul Budnik) writes:
: >
: >
: >>Scientific knowledge is not anyones property. It is the collective birth
: >>right of every human being. We need to think hard about how we can
: >>extend the notion of the public library into the information age
: >>without destroying the economic incentives that are so important to
: >>advancing the technology.
: >
: >Absolutely right. But the expansion of on-line information is not a
: >barrier to this goal. Rather, it provides the first opportunity in
: >history to come close to achieving it.
It offers that potential but there are also dangers of increasing the
division between the haves and have nots that has been growing rapidly
in this country over the last 15 years. It will not automatically happen
that way. We must make it happen. There are plenty of corporations
and individuals that see nothing but dollar signs and that will work
to make it move in the opposite direction.
: Not absolutely right. I love the idea of every single human being educated,
: but I don't believe it is their 'birth right' to have access to all this
: information. This might be getting a bit far afield, but "scientific
: knowledge" is the creators property. That individual human created it. If
: you duplicate it, then it is also your property. (I don't want to talk
: about copyrights or patents, etc.) If YOU CHOOSE to give it to the world,
: that is your right. No other human being can lay claim to your thoughts or
: knowledge.
Of course no one can lay claim to your thoughts and of course you can
copyright anything you write and restrict other peoples access to it.
However you cannot copyright or patent science. You can only copyright
your expression of that information. Once others understand it they
are free to explain it in their own way.
I believe in free enterprise but I think we also need to recognize that
most of the wealth of the world is the product of *previous generations*.
Whatever we accomplish is just our small addition to the collective wealth
they have created. No ones owns that knowledge. It is our collective
birth right. If you do any real science you contribute to that collective
stock of knowledge and once you tell others you no longer can or should
own or control that knowledge.
: I think that you should pay for access to that information, but as more and
: more is easily available. Consequently, the more you have available, the
: cheaper it is. (Likewise with age.) I think you should pay for it, but I
: want it to be cheap.
As I said it will not happen that way automatically. We have to make it
happen and we have to be careful about intellectual property laws. They
can just as easily stifle competition and creativity as they can provide
incentives for it. Keep in mind whether or not the scientific community
pays careful attention to these issues the people who hope to make a buck
off of this technology think very carefully about it. If they have their
way the technology will be designed to funnel as many dollars into their
pockets as possible.
Paul Budnik
Emory F. Bunn
>Tim Oertel (t...@cci.com) wrote:
>: In article <3c00di$o...@agate.berkeley.edu>, Emory F. Bunn <ted@physics2> wrote:
>: >Absolutely right. But the expansion of on-line information is not a
>: >barrier to this goal. Rather, it provides the first opportunity in
>: >history to come close to achieving it.
>
>It offers that potential but there are also dangers of increasing the
>division between the haves and have nots that has been growing rapidly
>in this country over the last 15 years. It will not automatically happen
>that way. We must make it happen. There are plenty of corporations
>and individuals that see nothing but dollar signs and that will work
>to make it move in the opposite direction.
I completely agree with the goal. I guess I just don't quite see what
it is that I'm supposed to worry about. This actually seems like one
of those cases where the free market will actually do what it is
supposed to. As long as people want access to this sort of
information (and judging from the skyrocketing usage of the internet,
people do), providers of it will compete for their business. Since
disseminating vast quantities of information electronically is cheap,
while distributing it on paper is prohibitively expensive, the
"information superhighway" is pretty much bound to lead to much more
widespread, cheaper availability of information than we have had in
the past.
I question your assertion that the gap between the haves and the
have-nots has been increasing. (At least as far as access to
information is concerned; material wealth is another matter entirely.)
B.I. (Before Internet) the vast majority of people in the U.S. had
access only to their local public libraries, which in most places are
woefully inadequate. I contend that things are, if anything, much
better now that relatively cheap access to the internet is a reality.
-Ted
Paul Budnik
: In article <3c64g7$8...@mtnmath.mtnmath.com> pa...@mtnmath.mtnmath.com (Paul Budnik) writes:
: >Tim Oertel (t...@cci.com) wrote:
: >: In article <3c00di$o...@agate.berkeley.edu>, Emory F. Bunn <ted@physics2> wrote:
: >: >Absolutely right. But the expansion of on-line information is not a
: >: >barrier to this goal. Rather, it provides the first opportunity in
: >: >history to come close to achieving it.
: >
: >It offers that potential but there are also dangers of increasing the
: >division between the haves and have nots that has been growing rapidly
: >in this country over the last 15 years. It will not automatically happen
: >that way. We must make it happen. There are plenty of corporations
: >and individuals that see nothing but dollar signs and that will work
: >to make it move in the opposite direction.
: I completely agree with the goal. I guess I just don't quite see what
: it is that I'm supposed to worry about.
For one thing you should be worrying about intellectual property laws.
Traditionally mathematical algorithms were not patentable. Software
patents have changed that. There are encryption and compression algorithms
that are now patented and a host of patents on software are being issued
on a regular basis. Microsoft thought about patenting the trick they
use to support long file names on FAT disk partitions but dropped the
idea. A patent like that would make it impossible for free tools like
Linux to read such disks and would be a substantial barrier to competing
operating systems.
These laws are becoming international through NAFTA and GATT and it is
important that the scientifically literate public have an understanding
of these issues. This could have an enormous impact down the line.
: This actually seems like one
: of those cases where the free market will actually do what it is
: supposed to.
The free market is a mythical beast that does not and never did exist.
Without anti-trust laws and a host of other legal protections IBM,
Microsoft, GM or AT&T etc, would come to rule the world in no time at all.
For those laws to be effective they have to evolve with the technology
and frankly we are doing a very poor job.
Do you know that Microsoft owes its existence to anti-trust laws?
The reason IBM licensed instead of purchased their operating system
for the PC was the anti-trust actions against them. What do you think
the PC world would look like today if IBM had bought and controlled
MS-DOS as well as the first hardware it ran on? How much do you think
a PC would cost today?
If IBM had been broken up 15 years ago almost everyone and especially
the stockholders and employees of IBM would be better off today.
Microsoft's dominance of the software market today is starting to
do serious harm and the recent consent decree they agreed do does
next to nothing to address this issue.
: As long as people want access to this sort of
: information (and judging from the skyrocketing usage of the internet,
: people do), providers of it will compete for their business. Since
: disseminating vast quantities of information electronically is cheap,
: while distributing it on paper is prohibitively expensive, the
: "information superhighway" is pretty much bound to lead to much more
: widespread, cheaper availability of information than we have had in
: the past.
There is no free market. There is only a semblance of a free market
in a legal environment that insures some level of competition and
access by new players. As the technology becomes more complex so do the
issues and protections needed to maintain a partially open partially
free market.
: I question your assertion that the gap between the haves and the
: have-nots has been increasing. (At least as far as access to
: information is concerned; material wealth is another matter entirely.)
Not if you need to spend a $1000 to buy a computer and at least $10 a
month for any access at all. If you have to work two jobs to feed your
family access to information is not very helpful since you have no
time to access it.
: B.I. (Before Internet) the vast majority of people in the U.S. had
: access only to their local public libraries, which in most places are
: woefully inadequate. I contend that things are, if anything, much
: better now that relatively cheap access to the internet is a reality.
The internet started in the late 60's and early 70's. What has changed
recently is the public service providers that have made access widely
available. The public library is still a much better source of
information for most people then the Internet. This may change with
time but it will not be easy.
Paul Budnik
tab...@vms.huji.ac.il
>
> I believe in free enterprise but I think we also need to recognize that
> most of the wealth of the world is the product of *previous generations*.
> Whatever we accomplish is just our small addition to the collective wealth
> they have created. No ones owns that knowledge. It is our collective
> birth right. If you do any real science you contribute to that collective
> stock of knowledge and once you tell others you no longer can or should
> own or control that knowledge.
>
>
If you're referring to anything but the stock of knowledge, your
claim is iffy. There's depreciation; in terms of generations, its
rather quick and complete, without repairs, maintenance, improvements
and so on, that year after year make it less and less the creation
of previous generations.
As far as knowledge goes,, Jesse Jackson, before he got too
politically correct to pronounce such thoughts, said, "Nobody's
too poor to do 2 hours of homework each night."
We all can go to the public library. In Israel, anybody who's
been a soldier - that's almost everybody - gets most of their
university education paid. Some party, some study.
Paul Budnik
: In article <3c64g7$8...@mtnmath.mtnmath.com>, pa...@mtnmath.mtnmath.com (Paul Budnik) writes:
: If you're referring to anything but the stock of knowledge, your
: claim is iffy. There's depreciation; in terms of generations, its
: rather quick and complete, without repairs, maintenance, improvements
: and so on, that year after year make it less and less the creation
: of previous generations.
My point is that the knowledge is mainly where the wealth is. With
the knowledge we can rebuild civilization form scratch in
a single generation. Without the knowledge it would take as long
as it did the first time.
: As far as knowledge goes,, Jesse Jackson, before he got too
: politically correct to pronounce such thoughts, said, "Nobody's
: too poor to do 2 hours of homework each night."
: We all can go to the public library. In Israel, anybody who's
: been a soldier - that's almost everybody - gets most of their
: university education paid. Some party, some study.
In the United States and especially in California it is becoming
increasingly difficult for those who are not wealthy to get a
good education. This is particularly insidious at a time when
the gap between the have and have nots is growing so rapidly
and good jobs for those not well educated are rapidly becoming extinct.
We need to understand that general education is the single most
important component of a nations infrastucture and it requires
investment of money, attention and talent. It is the most effective
way to pay back previous generations for the wealth they have
bestowed on us and it is our moral obligation.
Paul Budnik
mark a friesel
(Patricia M. Schwarz) wrote:
>
> I have been pondering the implications of the end of the era of expansion
> of academic science. (See "The Big Crunch" by David Goodstein, available at
> http://www.caltech.edu/~goodstein/)
......
> I am trying to envision how this "something" might look once it has
> really happened.
>
Yeah. A neo-feudal society where the majority of the public are minimally
trained, lack access to higher education, are completely out of the social
decision-making process, live in cardboard huts with dirt floors, and whose
lives are the property of various wealthy families which control the few
industries deemed necessary or desirable for the amusement or well-being of
the masters. This seems to be the logical end (although granted an
extremist viewpoint) of current social trends.
The economy in general is suffering from a nonsensical misconception that
production and investment in production can be contravariant, and that the
only worthwhile endeavor is production. Your guess is as good as mine as
to how long this can go before something snaps, but the trend is being
supported by a strong propaganda machine, extensive and effective political
manouvering, and a great deal of money (coming from where?). The ultimate
success of this effort is problematic, however. It's like the farmer who
believed that a horses' need for food and rest is simply an addiction and
sets about to prove it by experiment.
Serious scientists should realize by now that they can't squirm out of the
clamp that's being applied. The concepts of exploration and discovery are
quickly disappearing from the social paradigm. I'm think it not unlikely
that scientists will become the modern equivalent of the Jews in the first
half of the century, if the campaign against 'liberals' ever loses it's
effectiveness and a new enemy is needed.
Mark Friesel
(509) 375-2235
e-mail: ma_fr...@pnl.gov
Archimedes Plutonium
Alright, tremendous progress on explaining the counterintuitive decrease of resistance in parallel circuit.
Few scienctist recognizes that if you have counterintuitive science, you likely have a bad theory and need to get rid of the bad theory to make the counterintuitive go away.
Example: When you get cancer, you have unexpected weight loss. This is counterintuitive to the idea of a tumour mass growing inside your body. But the counterintuitive disappears if the theory is that a cancer mass is like a foreign entity that eats up you body like worm parasites eating up your body and thus losing weight.
Same thing in Physics with overall Resistance decreasing in Parallel circuits when adding more resistors. Here again, the wrong theory, adding together negative numbers as resistance is a larger negative number is a wrong theory here. A correct theory here is short circuiting a resistor by adding another resistor decreases overall resistance.
A algebra explanation is a constant voltage means a increase in current forces a decrease in resistance, V/R = i.
And in a geometry explanation, in Parallel Circuits, you have multiple paths to run electric in numerous closed loops, not just one closed loop as in Series. This multiple closed loops causes increase in current, yet constant voltage forces a decrease in resistance.