Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science

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Editorial Reviews
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Overview

In Reinventing Discovery, Michael Nielsen argues that we are living at the dawn of the most dramatic change in science in more than 300 years. This change is being driven by powerful new cognitive tools, enabled by the internet, which are greatly accelerating scientific discovery. There are many books about how the internet is changing business or the workplace or government. But this is the first book about something much more fundamental: how the internet is transforming the nature of our collective intelligence and how we understand the world.

Reinventing Discovery tells the exciting story of an unprecedented new era of networked science. We learn, for example, how mathematicians in the Polymath Project are spontaneously coming together to collaborate online, tackling and rapidly demolishing previously unsolved problems. We learn how 250,000 amateur astronomers are working together in a project called Galaxy Zoo to understand the large-scale structure of the Universe, and how they are making astonishing discoveries, including an entirely new kind of galaxy. These efforts are just a small part of the larger story told in this book--the story of how scientists are using the internet to dramatically expand our problem-solving ability and increase our combined brainpower.

This is a book for anyone who wants to understand how the online world is revolutionizing scientific discovery today--and why the revolution is just beginning.

Editorial Reviews

Library Journal

Presenting complex ideas clearly, Nielson explores in his first book how online collaborative tools, networked science, and open data policies are revolutionizing the process of discovery. He presents a clear vision of science's future and challenges us to bring it to fruition. The author divides the book into two parts. In the first, he explores how specific design principles allow online tools to amplify collective intelligence. Throughout, he uses examples from collaborative chess matches, the open-source movement, large-scale collaborative mathematics, and more to make abstract design principles easy to understand. In the second section, he explains how those tools benefit science, details the challenges the scientific community must overcome to make full use of them, and argues convincingly for a more open science. VERDICT Both captivating and enlightening, this book is recommended for general readers or specialists interested in how online collaboration tools, open data policies, and networked science might benefit the future of science and humanity.—Jonathan Bodnar, Emory Univ. Lib., Atlanta

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780691148908
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Publication date: 10/21/2011
Pages: 280
Sales rank: 166,354
Product dimensions: 6.32 (w) x 9.54 (h) x 0.86 (d)

Meet the Author

Michael Nielsen is one of the pioneers of quantum computing. He is an essayist, speaker, and advocate of open science.

Chapter 1:Reinventing Discovery 1

PART 1: AMPLIFYING COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE 13

Chapter 2: Online Tools Make Us Smarter 15

Chapter 3: Restructuring Expert Attention 22

Chapter 4: Patterns of Online Collaboration 44

Chapter 5: The Limits and the Potential of Collective Intelligence 69

PART 2: NETWORKED SCIENCE 89

Chapter 6: All the World?s Knowledge 91

Chapter 7: Democratizing Science 129

Chapter 8: The Challenge of Doing Science in the Open 172

Chapter 9: The Open Science Imperative 187

Appendix: The Problem Solved by the Polymath Project 209

Acknowledgments 215

Selected Sources and Suggestions for Further Reading 217

Notes 221

References 239

Index 255

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FRINGEINDEPENEDENTREVIEW

Posted November 2, 2011

VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!! GET THIS BOOK NOW!!!

Michael Nielson's new book, Reinventing Discovery, takes an in-depth look at the exponentially augmented power of problem solving through collaboration over the Internet. It's not like it could not have been anticipated - the Internet was, after all, in its youth, a tool of the academic world. Yet the reality is so much greater than any prediction might have been, and Nielson takes us right into this exciting new reality and allows us to understand for ourselves the near-magical capabilities that lay before us. What we are talking about here is the extent to which on-line collaboration on a specific problem has already been successful in solving problems that no one individual has been able to solve alone. Take the Polymath project that Nielson tells us about. In this instance a mathematician decided to use his blog to tackle an unsolved mathematical problem and through collaboration from mathematicians all over the Internet the problem was solved in 37 days. But the joy, as Nielson tells us, is less about getting the solution to any one problem than it is about this incredible new take on the scientific method. And there are other projects that are taking similar advantage of the potential of the Internet to gather knowledge and solve problems. Nielson calls this networked science, and insists that this ongoing transformation of the way we collaborate in our ventures is speeding up the rate of all scientific discovery. "Citizen science," as Nielson calls it, makes use of amateur volunteers in association with the scientists of academia in problem-solving. This new wave of collaboration is successful, first of all, because of the Internet's ability to "connect the right people" and "increase the cognitive diversity" of the participants in a cooperative venture. This is a fascinating look at a rapidly growing trend that is on the cusp of changing our society in profound ways. I have been riveted by it and the future it promises. My advice is - read it for yourself and let it inspire you!
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