Reinventing Discovery: The New Era Of Networked Science (2011) - Plot & Excerpts
"In the most successful online collaborations this use of microexpertise approaches an ideal in which collaboration routinely locates ... people with just the right microexpertise for the occasion. In particular, as creative collaboration is scaled up, problems can be exposed to people with a greater and greater range of expertise... Instead of being an occasional fortuitous coincidence, serendipity becomes commonplace. The collaboration achieves a kind of designed serendipity..." (27)"In this chapter we'll identify four powerful patterns that open source collaborations have used to scale. (1) a relentless commitment to working in a modular way, finding clever ways of splitting up the overall task into smaller subtasks; (2) encouraging small contributions, to reduce barriers to entry; (3) allowing easy reuse of earlier work by other people; and (4) using signaling mechanisms such as scores to help people decide where to direct their attention." (48-9)"This points the way to a fundamental requirement that must be met if we're to amplify collective intelligence: participants must share a body of knowledge and techniques. It's that body of knowledge and techniques that they use to collaborate. When this shared body exists, we'll call it shared praxis..." (75)"Citizen science can be a powerful way both to collect and also to analyze enormous data sets." (151)"The problem today is that while it's now in the collective interest of scientists to adopt new technologies, their individual interest remain aligned with journal publication." (189) This was a comprehensive look at the possible ways for science to evolve from the current "ivory tower" perspective. Nielsen offers several examples of projects that have succeeded in making real discoveries and/or accomplishments using crowdsourcing and open science strategies. He also illustrates examples that didn't succeed, which are useful to know. While acknowledging barriers that are currently hindering more of these types of projects, he offers potential ways around the barriers as well. It's very inspirational, and a peek at a very engaging way forward that I think would be good for the future of science.
What do You think about Reinventing Discovery: The New Era Of Networked Science (2011)?
I would actually highly recommend this book, although it could probably be a lot shorter.
—sarawiththeh
