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December 19th, 2007
07:50 pm - Be serious about science - sign this petition
The British government, in their infinite wisdom, plan to correct financial mistakes by cutting back on many vitally important resources and research projects.
If you're a British citizen, please sign this petition.
Some of the projects that are under threat include our access to northern hemisphere large optical telescopes, and a radio telescope array with a resolution comparable to Hubble.
Please pass on this message and let others know about this petition. Your MP would also be a good person to write to, find out how and do it online at this website.
More information can also be found at http://www.saveastronomy.co.uk/
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September 26th, 2007
02:03 pm - Women in science, engineering and computing - a few articles
Reading TechDirt this morning, I came across some interesting articles that I thought some of you might enjoy and could well spark some interesting discussions:
Software design puts off women
Science and engineering culture institutionally biased against women
Typical technology workplace unappealing to women
Interestingly, that last article reminds me of a very good essay by Joel which talks about how a better work environment is actually a cheaper means to attract staff than higher pay.
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August 26th, 2006
04:01 pm - Enabling inventions?
The other day I found myself reading about the idea of a technological singularity. This proposes that as the time between major inventions, discoveries and paradigm shifts appears to be decreasing, a time will be reached when either we will instantainiously invent everything (if you interpret the line as being a hyperbolic function), or have ever-increasing to near-constant streams of new technologies and concepts. Clicking on the above link should give you the background for this, and the examples being used.
Personally, I believe the idea is strongly flawed, and a very poor indicator for the future.
Some people argue that at a certain technology level, we will destroy ourselves. That's a nice idea, but sadly not really relivant to this problem, as there is no means to predict if this is or is not the case.
There is also the idea that progress is governed in terms of "buy-in"s, where the populace supports one idea fully but may choose to ignore another preventing any progress, but this again does not prevent the senario posed.
The statistical argument is probably the most valid, that past events cannot always be used to predict the future. Moreso is the accompanying argument that the data points used are typically arbitary, and so can be chosen so as to make the data fit.
So I've a question for you, to try and come up with my own data points for such a thing:
There are certain concepts which, upon being found or invented, suddenly allow other concepts to appear and bloom. Without the valve or transistor, modern computing could not have happened. The steam engine changed the world, for the first time giving us rotary power on demand, without the need for water. Agriculture... wow, what more can be said?
What do you think have been the major enabling inventions, ideas and discoveries throughout all of history?
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/niaha/kitty/ankthinkg.gif) curious
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