Time to start writing
from the gigahands-make-nanowork dept.
ChrisPhoenix writes "(This was written as a letter to Foresight leadership; Chris Peterson asked us to get Nanodot feedback.)
In a spontaneous group that formed Sunday night after the recent Foresight Senior Associates Gathering, four of us discovered that we all felt similarly: that the time has come to build on the suggestions and issues produced by previous Foresight work and gatherings. Having attended several Gatherings and heard several issues from multiple perspectives, we are ready to start filling in the details. Although large and random groups are great for brainstorming, they are perhaps not the best structure for producing detailed, focused, mature work on specific issues. Small working groups or think tanks would be useful at this point, to begin processing the excellent suggestions that have flowed from the Gatherings." (Click Read More… for the rest.)
We have come up with several tentative plans for using Foresight's resources most effectively. The basic idea is to form small groups capable of addressing specific questions or goals and efficiently producing focused, well-informed output. Initially the output may be in the form of white papers; as groupware becomes available, the output might be in a form that preserves more of the collaboration, hyperlinks, and diversity of opinion that go into its construction.
We see at least two ways of forming the groups. A group could be designed to work on a particular issue or type of issues. The members would be picked from a pool of volunteers according to their training and other qualifications. It could be structured as a working group or think tank. Alternatively, a group could self-organize around a paper and its author/authors, critiquing and expanding the initial work.
The Foresight Institute could easily provide substantial assistance by: 1) Gathering and maintaining a list of people interested in participating in such focused work, and their qualifications. 2) Providing Web space and possibly physical space to support the groups. 3) Publishing completed papers.
We are preparing a partial list of topics that seem suitable for study and research. This list could be made available to the Foresight community and papers solicited on any of the topics suggested by it. Each paper would be shown to reviewers with appropriate skills; after a few iterations, assuming the paper was of adequate quality, a group would coalesce to develop and polish it. Alternatively, if a think tank existed in the appropriate domain, the paper could be adopted and improved by that group. Initially this process could be done manually and informally; as more people participate, a reputation system could be added, perhaps as part of a groupware project.
Once a paper enters this process, it will be treated more or less like an Open Source project. Proprietary information should not be submitted; the reviewers don't need the extra burden of remembering which information they must not discuss. Of course work still in "beta" state should not be widely published without consent of the primary author.
The Foresight Institute needs to bring new members up to speed; pass on new information; generate creative suggestions; and generate products suitable for action or publication. It seems difficult to accomplish all of these in a one-weekend, one-format Gathering, though Foresight has made several very impressive attempts to do just that. The recent Gatherings have done much to bring new members up to speed, and have generated many suggestions in a brainstorming mode. Now that some suggestions have been around for a while, familiarity with them has ripened into a desire for specific productivity. We suggest small review/working groups as a way to focus this desire on specific issues.
Richard Fannon
Pat Gratton
Chris Phoenix
Bruce Ratcliff
September 24th, 2000 at 6:16 AM
Good idea
This is the kind of thing I was hoping for with the draft paper I posted earlier on "Open Sourcing Nanotechnology." Any comments on that paper between now and mid-October would be welcomed in revising the paper for the November MNT conference.
I got into the issue of open sourcing out of a concern about ways to make the benefits of nanotechnology available. The next paper I plan to write will be on "Accessing Abundance" looking at access to technology and social implications of material abundance, again focusing on near to medium term policy choices.
I've had some e-mail discussion with Bill Spence (NanoTechnology Magazine) who is suggesting a "Global Quality" initiative to promote spreading the benefits of nanotechnology. I would be interested in corresponding here or via e-mail with others who might want to collaborate in looking at how to promote safe and equitable access to MNT as the technology develops.
September 24th, 2000 at 11:21 AM
Control isn't the problem…
I agree with the general thrust of this, but I'm a bit concerned with the attitude that seems to underlie a few of the phrases in the description.
There seems to be an idea that the problem in creating documents (or whatever) will be too much participation. It talks about avoiding "large and random groups", and about finding reviewers with "appropriate skills" (as if anybody could always see what "appropriate skills" would be).
I submit that the problem isn't going to be keeping groups small. The problem is going to be getting any groups at all. It's easy to get people to sit in a weekend bull session on a topic. It's hard to get people to write anything significant, or to review it thoughtfully. Lots of people submit documents to Nanodot, or hand them out at gatherings, or whatever. I don't think there've been any cases of anybody being overwhelmed with comments or assistance. Sure, you get the odd bozo comment, but you don't get very many comments of any kind.
All of the standards that define the Internet have been written in open mailing lists. Despite very widespread interest in some of those projects, the signal-to-noise ration on those lists has been pretty tolerable. Once you start doing actual work, noise tends to drop off on its own.
Another thing that worries me is the comment that "Of course work still in 'beta' state should not be widely published without consent of the primary author.". This sort of viewpoint seems to be the academic equivalent of the commercial obsession with intellectual property, and I think it's equally dangerous. It also reflects the rather conceited view that there really is a "primary author" for everything. Open development is open development. It's polite to give people credit for things, but let's not get hidebound…
… and it sounds to me like there's a lot of concern about focusing resources that don't exist in the first place. I'd be shocked if any of this got big enough to need a lot of structure for quite a while.
I think the best thing Foresight could do to support this sort of work would be to continue with its existing groupware projects. It could also usefully maintain a list of projects underway or under consideration (like the more-or-less dead list on the old Senior Associates' web page, but easier to update and better publicized). Maintaining lists of people sounds a lot more complicated, and probably a lot less effective, than maintaining lists of projects.
Web space is essentially a free good, and I don't see why Foresight should undertake the administrative burden of running general-purpose Web servers.
In the meantime, why not start a couple of working groups and see where they go? All you need is a mission statement and a mailing list. There's no need to overstructure things, or to discuss them into the ground.
September 24th, 2000 at 11:27 PM
Facilitate, not control…
You make some good points; you also misunderstood my intent in a couple of places. Here's what I see as the current situation: Foresight has produced several Senior Associate Gatherings, at which many people gather to listen and sometimes to brainstorm. This has been quite successful at generating useful questions; it's a good way to convert brainpower into broad ideas. However, Foresight is not (yet) doing as much as it could to help convert brainpower into, say, white papers.
You said that thoughtful review is difficult to achive; I completely agree. That's why I talked about reviewers with appropriate skills. You also implied that weekend bull sessions are unlikely to produce papers. Again, I agree; hence my comment about "large and random groups." I am not concerned with keeping people away from projects or with signal-to-noise ratio; I am concerned with making it easier to form useful working groups.
If I want to write a paper today, I'm basically on my own. I must either do it myself, or find my own collaborators. Then I have to find my own reviewers, and then I have to find a place to publish it. (Also, I'd personally like to review papers, but I don't have an effective way to find papers that need reviewers.) It is difficult to create groups to work on papers; a large part of this difficulty is knowing who to talk to. I'm thinking that a central clearinghouse and infrastructure would be a good idea. Not to control anything! Just to make it easier for me to find the people who can help me, or the people I can help.
You raise interesting points about primary authorship and limited publication. I think that here, we'll have to agree to disagree. Successful Open Source projects generally have one, or a few, leaders. Without a leader, the project is probably doomed. Perhaps I should have said "primary author(s)", but that's as far as I'll go. As to the limits on publication, there are many valid reasons why an author might not want their preliminary work to be published. This concern is not limited to academia (though it would be stupid to build something that academics would be unwilling to participate in). Authors should be able to use this service without seeing their work snatched away and published before they're ready.
I don't know why you say the resources don't exist. With the amount of brainpower and knowledge we have in the Foresight community, not to mention several top-notch universities nearby, we have more than enough resources to produce a few papers. Why aren't more papers being written? I think it's because it is hard to take a good idea all the way to publication on your own. There may be other reasons; please make constructive suggestions. I know I'd write more if I knew that a structure existed for expanding, reviewing, and publishing my work.
Certainly existing groupware projects should be maintained. And certainly a list of projects and potential projects would be useful; we suggested something similar. As to Foresight's web space, the main point of that is to add legitimacy to the papers, and make them easier to find–surely a valuable service to any author!
We already have two projects underway that will probably spawn working groups soon. But keep in mind that it's a lot easier to form a group if you know who to ask. This is why I think the survey is crucial. Assuming we get useful responses (which we won't know until we try), maintaining a list of people is not difficult, and the list could be a big help to some would-be authors.
Chris
September 25th, 2000 at 6:21 PM
Re:Facilitate, not control…
jbash wrote:
Chris Phoenix wrote:
So how about this for structure: Nanodot maintains a list of papers in progress in the form of a Slashbox (one of those little boxes down the right side of the main page). Each paper in this list is a link to a mailing list hosted on eGroups. Anyone can start her own group there for free. A group consists of a mailing list with online archives, a home page, a links page, etc. You can even put files on it. In other words, it's got everything you would likely need to organize a small group of people around the development of a whitepaper.
Cost of implementation: however long it takes Dave Krieger to set up a Slashbox. Probably a few minutes.
–Root
September 25th, 2000 at 6:47 PM
Re:Good idea
Excellent example. Facilitating the development of papers like this is exactly what we would like to do.