Building a 21st century interface for science

Pen and paper took us as far as the moon. It's about time we went to the stars.

By analogy, it should act like a Google search, in that users can ask questions of any part of the scientific record. However, it should be unlike a Google search in that it synthesises information across all search results to produce a systems-level understanding of the search query, accessible to the user through many kinds of rich, dynamic repre... See more

In this future, mainstream media no longer interprets scientific information. Instead, they draw directly from the source. In fact, all scientific communication and learning, including every textbook, lecture and online course draws from the same, original, primary artifacts accessible through the same interface. Expert scientists, lay readers and ... See more

Fully open, easily accessible data, together with open debate and version control, enables much greater scrutiny over results, which should lead to more accurate knowledge.

The responsibility of any interface is to understand and mitigate fallible human behaviours to meaningfully extend our capabilities.

Words are a lossy medium for describing rich, multidimensional ideas.

So, representing systems dynamically is important for learning about and understanding systems deeply. This is important for both novices and experts. However, dynamic representations of systems are not just useful for learning. Dynamic simulations are models of some interacting phenomena, which makes them able to predict things.

There may be good reason to be optimistic about non-'scientists' taking part in science....Innocentive creates prizes to incentivise a distributed global network to solve specific problems for organisations who can't solve those problems in-house. Problems can be highly technical (see image below), and span across many domains. I will reuse Michael... See more

In many cases, the reader might be able to provide valuable insight that was inaccessible to the author, simply because they have had a different set of experiences. They may be able to unlock something important by applying their own knowledge in the context of the paper. Despite being highly valuable, this kind of insight isn't recorded anywhere,... See more