News and Collective Consciousness

Any branch of the technology world has learning curve challenges. In research particularly, it's always been the case that you are working on the edge. You can't get a book or a manual to help you through some of the stuff you are doing. Well, within reason. Actually, it usually starts out with a big range of options for getting going. So you start with a subject that you need to learn about, you get a book or a website and get your feet wet.

Gradually as you progress towards the element of the subject you wish to explore, you find yourself a member of a smaller and smaller peer group. Before you know it, it seems, it's you and a guy in Luxembourg and nobody else has expertise in the area.

Conferences, standards groups and professional associations are helpful - as frankly most research these days seems to be a situation where a few dozen other groups are exploring the same subject. The subject is typically in the research community's collective consciousness and several researcher are poking it with sticks trying to figure out what works.

The ancient usenet newsgroup system, continuing on as community discussion boards, provides a valuable element here. Or perhaps I should say invaluable. I think it was Vernor Vinge who pointed out that we may already be into a singular age now, in that many things would be impossible without that resource of newsgroups. Where no manuals or tutorials exist, we've been able to create this distributed thing to which previous pioneers have attached their brains, and as someone pushes into the space, they can interactively pose questions and get answers or suggestions. The synergies (don't we all hate that word) of the situation allow that guy to go a bit further, and when the next questions come from the next foray forward, he is able to provide some answers.

Thus we have this collective consciousness going - at least in certain academic pursuits. Internet, programming, networking, oceanography :)

There are enthusiasts hacking in all areas, including alternative energy and such. But as you get away from those core areas where newsgroups and community boards were always active, you become more and more a couple of guys with a garage or a basement workshop.

So this morning I am digging through questions on my project, trying to get some web technologies working for me. Unfortunately I've been learning more javascript than I'd like to. Even in it's Ajax incarnation, I'd rather it went away and let Python take over as the embedded scripting solution. I'm sure it will happen in the future.

In fact, having just installed Firefox 3, I wonder if there isn't already some support. What if I put a bit of python code in between some tags? Probably nothing yet - but mark my words :)

Researchinator returns to his project, lamenting the paltry number of hours in a day.