Posts from — July 2003

In the July 28 SearchDay, Chris Sherman profiles I …. In the July 28 SearchDay, Chris Sherman profiles ISIHighlyCited, the free search engine of highly cited researchers. ISIHighlyCited lets you find highly cited researchers by name, field, institution, and country. When you find a researcher of interest, you can see an ISI-built resume and bibliography of his/her works, but there are no links to full-texts. Sherman compares the service to Google, because ranking by citation is analogous to the Google's method of ranking by incoming links. He also compares it to ResearchIndex, which offers citation analysis of its contents. The difference, of course, is that ResearchIndex also offers open access to the contents themselves. [Open Access News]

I will state now, and for the record, that due to the nature of the data from which this information is generated, it is highly biased toward certain perspectives. Many more people are just as highly cited in a wide variety of areas, but don't show up in this analysis because it lacks consideration for the immense breadth of journals available and interdisciplinary considerations. In short, it needs more journals, and more comparisons to have any meaning except in narrowly defined fields. Or so sayeth my opinion on the matter.

Wolfowitz Says U.S. Must Act Even on 'Murky' Data.

Reuters: U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz on Sunday defended the invasion of Iraq as an example of how the United States had to be prepared to act on “murky intelligence” in its war on terrorism…

[The Agonist]

You do not wage war and kill people because you think they did something wrong. You have to know they did something wrong, more and more, this whole war smells of war profiteering to me, completely wrong and immoral, unjustified. I support the troops entirely, I don't support the politics and rhetoric of those that sent them there. Men and women have died because of Murky Evidence, that is in my book not acceptable. There is a place where you are 'sure enough' that is good enough for me, but apparently they weren't sure of anything. The government of the U.S. seems to have systematically misleading the public on this one, there is no tie to Al Queda, no tie to WMD, no other tie at all except the franchise of ones father… I'm happy to be proven wrong on this, but other than to make money on Oil, and the human rights abuses(not mentioned until recently by our apparently similarly abusive regime), I do not see what the justification is.

Jean-Claude Guédon, Open Access Archives: from sci …. Jean-Claude Guédon, Open Access Archives: from scientific plutocracy to the republic of science, IFLA Journal, 29, 2 (2003) pp. 129-140. Excerpt: “The recent history of science has been characterized not only by a transition from science to ÎBig Scienceâ, to use Derek de Solla Priceâs terminology, but also by a deep transformation which, in retrospect, threatens to subvert the original values of modern science. Originally, science appeared as an offspring of the ÎRepublic of Lettersâ, and as such, it belonged to a certain elite: the social structure of Europe in the late Renaissance would have made any other arrangement most unlikely. However, inside the scientific playground, elitism gave way to a peer-to-peer mode of behaviour.” [Open Access News]

This is a good article, it resonates strongly with my work on the republic of letters, commonplace books, and secondary communication channels in science and philosophy/social thought. It also has practical application, and I think that if we could get a few secondary level archives going, the rest will follow. However, they can't be purely disciplinary in nature…. That will crush them under the weight of general disinterest.

Networks of Innovation by Ilkka Tuomi.

From the extract (PDF), looks to be very interesting. The soon-to-be-published Networks of Innovation: Change and Meaning in the Age of the Internet (Oxford University Press; ISBN: 0199256985) by Ilkka Tuomi.

• “As many commentators have observed, the process of science itself is very much based on peer-review, incremental development, non-economic motives, and geographically distributed collaboration. Indeed, tradtional models of innovation often assumed that basis research generates ideas and technologies that are appropriated by entrepreneurs who them to products and money.”
• “The history of Linux allows one to question to what extent existing economic models of innovation and technological development capture phenomena that underlie collective production of new technolgies.”

[Robert Shaw: Open Source]

I'm reading Ilkka's book now, I've been impressed with his previous work and am thankful that he mentioned mine in it. Is anyone else reading this out there?

Things They've Learned. Why bother figuring out universal truths for yourself when someone else has already done it for you. Find out how a neurotic comedian, a sausage magnate, a genome decoder, and the world's most famous nuclear power plant safety inspector distill life's truths into twenty or so insightful and humorous statements. [MetaFilter]

There are alot of interesting insights here.

Manuel DeLanda Bibliography.

Manuel DeLanda Annotated Bibliography

[Abstract Dynamics]

this is good work, i wish there was more. i haven't read all of delanda's work yet apparently, which is a good thing to know.

Virtual humans edge closer. Computer-generated avatars are slowly starting to look, sound and act as if they were really alive. [BBC News | Technology | UK Edition]

Nifty, i want to start a new buribot.

Hackers and Academia…. Just stumbled across The Hacker FAQ, an “attempt to cover some of the issues that will invariably come up when people without previous experience of the hacker community try to hire a hacker.” Reading it, I'm struck by how the… [Epistemographer]

no academia is not necessarily more hacker friendly than any other culture, though there are perhaps some aspects of academic culture that seem similar, i suggest asking colleagues about their experiences, and you will probably find out that the cultures may be similar but the cultural expectations differ…..

IT and Sustainable Workshop.

On June 26-27, 2003 a number of experts from many countries and organizations gathered at a workshop at the World Bank in Washington, DC to discuss impact of information and communications technologies on sustainable development. The workshop was organized by Carnegie Mellon University with the support from NSF, World Bank and UN. Presentations from a recently workshop . (via Reuben)

[E M E R G I C . o r g]

this looks like it could be interesting but the link is currently down:(

worst blogger ever. it's official: i'm nominating myself as the worst blogger, or guest blogger, ever. i'm finding it hard to get online to check email, not to… [Fragments]

David's Guestblogging efforts are now broadcast with a bit of humor:)