Weblogs as Lab Notebooks

"The whole power of science is the power of shared ideas, not the power of hidden ideas" Well said.  Here's McGee's  idea: Setup each incoming Ph.D. or Master's candidate with a weblog at the beginning of their program. Coach them to use the weblog as a lab notebook of their developing intellectual capital. Use your own weblog to comment on their work and their thinking. Where do you think these students will be after several years of sustained and steady writing? How many will have already started to establish reputations as serious thinkers? Substitute 'fourth grader' for 'Ph. D. candidate' and you have the beginnings of a real science program.  Substitute 'portfolio' for 'lab notebook' and you have a revolution in the making.  If you really wanted to make sure no child was left behind, then make sure they have a weblog at age eleven. [Tellio]

How I wish that every ten-year old had a weblog. They see more clearly than most of us and routinely ask probing questions (when we let them). Indeed, growing a kids' weblog community is a project that would really interest me. I bet they'd get the hang of it faster than most adults.

11:01:44 PM    

Dan Gillmor on Clayton Christensen

They launched 12 bonafide disruptive growth businesses from mid-50s to late 70s. Since then, great innovation but not disruptive. PlayStation an entry in established market. What halted disruptive innovation, he says: Founder Morito left in 1980, and he'd had a policy not to do market research. In 1982 Sony hired its first MBA.

11:01:22 PM    

Documenting unfolding research processes.

Sébastien Paquet summarises his thinking about blogs in research in story on Personal knowledge publishing and its uses in research.

Uses of personal knowledge publishing for research:

• Helping in selecting material
• Visible web of interpersonal trust
• Managing personal knowledge
• Obtaining speedy feedback on ideas
• Facilitating connections between researchers
• Clustering content relating to emerging fields
• Fostering diversity
• Opening up windows in the Ivory Tower(s)

I like this story not only for the good quality content that provokes thinking and saves time of trying to explain "blogs" to my colleagues, but also for one more thing. For me, as a regular reader of Seb's Open Research it illustrates the evolution of thinking: I recognise "bits of ideas" that I've seen before, and I'm fascinated to see how they emerge into a whole. What could be better for the "researcher-to-be" than observing how someone's thought grows?

From a personal standpoint, writing a blog gives me a way of seeing this evolution unfold in a more conscious manner. But I find it rewarding to see that other people can benefit from the effort as well. As I wrote in Online Communities and the Future of Culture,

More and more of these people realize that good personal contacts will come more easily if they narrate their own work, spread the word about what they're trying to find or achieve, and overtly link their own thoughts with others' thoughts.

This means that, increasingly, new culture -- as a process, not as a product -- is being documented in real-time online by the people who make it. This is a significant departure from the way things have traditionally been working.

The gradual erosion of the "product" mindset is a direct offshoot of the availability of practically unlimited many-to-many communication. A product is a nice package that you can "get" and "consume", and it definitely has its usefulness. But in many ways, processes, as things you can "live" and "take part" in, mean more to most humans.

It's the difference between going at a live music show and listening to a recording of that show. It's the difference engaging a conversation with an author and reading his book. You often get more out of living a process than consuming a product.

Now, we can see and feel human processes, even from a great distance in time or space. And to me it means that there is a potential to be closer together, as people.

The way I categorize people in my link list (on the left) gives Tanya Rabourn the giggles. That's okay. I like to make people laugh. But the serious aspect of this categorization is that it roughly defines how I interface with these people. The question you can read between the lines is: "Are you more process or product?". My preference for one over the other is obvious.

[Seb's Open Research]

Nice reading.  10:56:50 PM    

Swede researchers apply for psoriasis gene patent. ABC Online Oct 6 2002 3:59PM ET [Moreover - moreover...]

Of course they do not say what the gene is. Pharmnas have not contacted them about using the gene so they are going to patent it. I wonder what the gene is and why no one has rushed to get exclusive rights?  10:54:58 PM    

Edge Interview with Steven Pinker.

This is a month old, but I haven't seen it linked to elsewhere. Edge carries an interesting interview with MIT research psychologist Steven Pinker, following the release of his book the blank slate, on the taboos many people have against investigating human nature from a biological perspective. Here are some quotes relating to authority and the neglect of real human needs that rang particularly true to me:

The 20th century saw the rise of a movement that has been called "authoritarian high modernism," which was contemporaneous with the ascendance of the blank slate. City planners believed that people's taste for green space, for ornament, for people-watching, for cozy places for intimate social gatherings, were just social constructions. They were archaic historical artifacts that were getting in the way of the orderly design of cities, and should be ignored by planners designing optimal cities according to so-called scientific principles. [...] Ornamentation, human scale, green space, gardens, and comfortable social meeting places were written out of the cities because the planners had a theory of human nature that omitted human esthetic and social needs.

Another example is the arts. In the 20th century, modernism and post-modernism took over, and their practitioners disdained beauty as bourgeois, saccharine, and lightweight. Art was deliberately made incomprehensible or ugly or shocking[~]again, on the assumption that people's tastes for attractive faces, landscapes, colors, and so on were reversible social constructions. This also led to an exaggeration of the dynamic of social status that has always been part of the arts. The elite arts used to be aligned with the economic and political aristocracy. They involved displays of sumptuosity and the flaunting of rare and precious skills that only the idle rich could cultivate. But now that any now that any schmo can afford a Mozart CD or can go to a free museum, artists had to figure out new ways to differentiate themselves from the rabble. And so art became baffling and uninterpretable without acquaintance with arcane theory.

By their own admission, the humanities programs in universities, and institutions that promote new works of elite art, are in crisis. People are staying away in droves. I don't think it takes an Einstein to figure out why. By denying people's sense of visual beauty in painting and sculpture, melody in music, meter and rhyme in poetry, plot and narrative and character in fiction, the elite arts wrote off the vast majority of their audience[~]the people who approach art in part for pleasure and edification rather than social one-upmanship. Today there are movements in the arts to reintroduce beauty and narrative and melody and other basic human pleasures. And they are considered radical extremists!

[Seb's Open Research]

I just got the book and am interested in reading it, since I think I might disagree with portions of it. The way we feel about a lot of things is very much dependent on the society. The interaction of our genes with the environment is so complex that generalizations can be difficult. We can't even figure out what the best diet is for us. How can we figure out the basic propeties of humanity that are gentically driven.  10:52:49 PM    

U.S. consumers challenge spread of biotech food. Environmental News Network Oct 4 2002 8:48PM ET [Moreover - moreover...]

The problems with most GM food is that it does nothing for the consumer, since they are not the customer these companies are interested in.Their customers are the farmers. Things might be a little cheaper but not outrageously so. Companies like Monsanto are creating herbicide-resistant GM foods to sell more herbicide. The farmers hope to cut costs but the GM foods still need spraying, particularly as insects gain herbicide resistance also. This sort of GM food is going to always be a problem. Better approaches range from overexpressing a natural protein that affects caterpillars or making the food heathier. The problem with this approach Oregon is taking is that it tars ALL GM foods with the same label. There are, and will be, very good GM foods that are beneficial to the average person, not just the companies. But will it have a better tag on it or will everything be labeled GM?  10:30:43 PM    

Students Refuse to Dissect Animals

10:16:19 PM    

Alexandre Dumas. "All generalizations are dangerous, even this one." [Quotes of the Day]

I love quotes with their own metaquotes in them.  9:29:28 PM