Mitch Waldrop on Science 2.0

I'm way behind on this, but anyway: a while back, writer Mitch Waldrop interviewed me and a whole bunch of other people interested in (what I usually call) Open Science, for an upcoming article in Scientific American.  A draft of the article is now available for reading, but even better -- in a wholly subject matter appropriate twist, it's also available for input from readers.  Quoth Mitch:

Welcome to a Scientific American experiment in "networked journalism," in which readers -- you --get to collaborate with the author to give a story its final form.

The article, below, is a particularly apt candidate for such an experiment: it's my feature story on "Science 2.0," which describes how researchers are beginning to harness wikis, blogs and other Web 2.0 technologies as a potentially transformative way of doing science. The draft article appears here, several months in advance of its print publication, and we are inviting you to comment on it. Your inputs will influence the article's content, reporting, perhaps even its point of view.

So consider yourself invited. Please share your thoughts about the promise and peril of Science 2.0. -- just post your inputs in the Comment section below.

It's good to see Science 2.0 getting not just mainstream attention, but well-crafted and balanced mainstream attention.  It's also good to see a "Journalism 2.0" approach being tested, so if you have ideas or opinions, go participate.

On a personal note, I'm pleased but a little embarrassed to have been quoted by name in an article for which I know Mitch interviewed a lot of people who are actually *doing* Science 2.0, not just cheering from the sidelines like me.  It's hard to be critical of choices made in the face of space constraints (the article is destined for print), but there's no such limit online.  I wonder whether Mitch and his SciAm editors would consider putting a longer version online? 

In a similar vein, in comments here Bora asks whether we (John's "usual suspects") couldn't put together a longer article for publication somewhere.  I think I might have a better idea (though it's hardly original with me).  From my point of view, the best thing about my 3Quarks Open Science articles from about a year ago is that they are already wildly out of date.  The -- to me -- obvious way to update them and keep them up-to-date is to turn them into a wiki (probably starting from the Nodalpoint wiki's Open Science page).  I think the articles cover most of the main bases, and each section could relatively easily be turned into a wiki page; with a little attention to style, it should then be fairly easy to re-write the articles from the updated information.  I am, as usual, swamped with work, so I won't be able to wiki-ize anything any time soon -- I do intend to get to it eventually, but in the meantime the articles themselves are all CC-BY and my Simpy bookmarks, which should help with updating, are pub dom and I'd be happy to help if anyone else wanted to take a stab at it. 

Finally, if you enjoyed the SciAm article, you might also enjoy more of Mitch's writing: he has a blog, a new gig at Nature and has written three books to date: The Dream Machine (2001), Complexity (1992) and Man-Made Minds (1987). (I swiped his affiliate links, I hope they still work.)


Comments

Hi Bill,

I think a number of the "usual suspects" will be at the Science Blogging Conference later this week (and I include myself among my own usual suspects) so it seems like an opportunity to get something going.

See you at the conference!

John

Comment number: 016603   Posted by: John Dupuis on January 14, 2008 09:50 AM from IP: 130.63.112.49

I'd be more than happy to see the Nodalpoint wiki as a base for these ideas. People post less to Nodal than they did, now that there are so many other alternatives, but the wiki has potential to be a great resource. Please feel free to edit away over there.

Comment number: 016646   Posted by: Neil on January 16, 2008 05:38 AM from IP: 124.171.166.217

Sweet, thanks Neil.

Looking forward to Saturday, John!

Comment number: 016671   Posted by: bill on January 17, 2008 09:40 PM from IP: 76.27.237.234

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