New Year. New Science.

[AVGWarhawk]

I'm very interested in the underwater network. As much as we like to think space is the final frontier I'm inclined to believe the oceans depths have much to be discovered.

[mookiemookie]

It's amazing to see how fast science makes progress. Think about it...there probably wasn't a lot of change in the way that people did things or the things that people knew in say, year 500 to year 501. Probably not a whole lot of change from 500 to 600 even. But today, the world is changing faster than ever. It's an exciting time to be alive.

[AVGWarhawk]

Do you think the internet is a driving force in the speed of advancement in the sciences? Let's face it, I can share information with you in a matter of seconds.

[Penguin]

Well, I wouldn't think in categories like good or bad when it comes to scientific research. As everthing is interconnected, science and philosophy should not be seen as totally seperate entities. I wish scientists would more often look over the edge and consider morale too, everyone who read Dürrenmatt's The Physicists knows what I mean. However science mostly looks for a breakthough and new discoveries in their field, the driving force behind it is not necessarily the common good.

That being said, I am very critical when it comes to patenting genes. Just for this I wish god would exist and sue the crap out of everyone who would attempt to do so.

Originally Posted by AVGWarhawk

Do you think the internet is a driving force in the speed of advancement in the sciences? Let's face it, I can share information with you in a matter of seconds.

Of course does the net speed up things, it was one of the driving forces behind its developement.
The so called "information problem" was already phrased when we were confrontated with exponentially growing knowledge, in the beginning of the 19th century. It was impossible to keep up with the knowledge, this is where the scientific specialization began. A big downer was that the scientific exchange was pretty difficult, the exchange of discoveries not as much as the exchange of research. For a scientist it was for instance nearly impossible to find out if others are already working on a problem - or already found a solution. Good examples for many working simultaneously on the same stuff with similar results would be the telephone or the automobile. If all those teams which worked on that would have had the possibility to exchange information, it would have certainly speeded things up.
So when one of the early US computer pioneers, Vannevar Bush, wrote his ground-breaking essay "As Me may think" in 1945 the prob, which he called the "library problem" was still existing. What made the essay so great is not only the content, but also the inspiration it gave to others. When you compare the developement of the web, with building a house, it led to the foundation.

A pretty good essay about it can be read here . On page 3 there is some good info about the library problem. Though I can highly recommend to read Bush's essay too, as he was a radio operator in the pacific when he wrote the stuff, there are also some references to science and war/the military.
You can see an animation of the device that Bush though about to access and exchange information, called the Memex, .

[AVGWarhawk]

I will print up the essay and read! When I think of the internet and what I had as a kid(library and encyclopedias), the internet is light years far and away better.

The information exchange is incredibly fast. The sheer amount of information available is incredible.

Thanks for the links!

Edit: the Memex and Vannevar was way ahead of the times. He had a good vision. Microfilm did become a form of information storage.

[Penguin]

Your welcome, AVG . Actually I recently did some research on the whole subject of the development of the web, so this is one of my areas of interest atm.
Having grown up without the web and with the same devices of information exchange like you, I think of the immigrant kid I had in my class. He spent about 2 years on his project to read the German equivalent to the Encyclopædia Britannica, the Brockhaus, from A-Z. In retrospective I think what he did was wikipeding 1.0, a common sport for us today, where you click on an article about bananas and eventually land on an article about quantum mechanics.

[Herr-Berbunch]

I do the same with a dictionary (call me sad).

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by Penguin

In retrospective I think what he did was wikipeding 1.0, a common sport for us today, where you click on an article about bananas and eventually land on an article about quantum mechanics.

Ever play "Wiki Ladders"?