Category — Science and Technology Policy

Map of Science:
The Map of Science is a network map showing the relationships between 1.6 million scientific articles. The algorithm for the map was put together by Richard Klavans and Kevin Boyack. At the site you can click through to other maps showing analysis by geography, industry, institutions, and topics.
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Pretty cool, but does history guide policy in this way. does prior performance of scientific networks determine how we should encourage them in the future? I’m not really certain, but my opinion is that the data that comprises systems like this is at best representative of certain scientific misconceptions and at worst only related to individual subjects in a way that makes real systemic understanding impossible.

The Living Edge:
David Sifry has just put up The State of the Live Web, April 2007. To explain the Live Web, he points to a pair of pieces I wrote in 2005. If you’d like a more visual explanation, follow the slides from this talk I gave at OSCON last summer, starting here.

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Doc points toward Dave’s use of some of his work in the live web and more important the communal or collective web as compared to what might be thought of as the individualistic web. Of course, in my view, the www is a policy regime, a device that constrains and constructs relationships, not merely among data, but primarily among humans. The current transformation of the web into user-generation and user-integration is fascinating because it is making possible a much broader mode of awareness, communication, and community construction.

Living knowledge – The international Science Shop Network:

Communities building knowledge:
innovation through citizens’ science and university engagement

August 30 – September 1, 2007- Paris (France)
(Ecole des Mines de Paris)

This conference will provide a forum where information on community based research, carried out in both community and academic settings, can be shared and developed. It will reflect the social impact and scientific and democratic value of research from a range of disciplines including social, natural, physical and technological sciences. This conference will be of interest to people who are active in, or interested in, the field of community-based research.

Main conference themes:
- University engagement with communities
- Citizens’ science and social movements
- Research policy – from local to global
- Innovation and citizens – added values for communities
- Participatory processes in science and technology
Within the five main conference themes different topics can be discussed.

You’re invited to submit a short proposal for a contribution at the conference

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This appears to be an interesting conference.

G8-UNESCO World Forum on ‘Education, Research and Innovation: New Partnership for Sustainable Development’

G8-UNESCO World Forum on ‘Education, Research and Innovation: New Partnership for Sustainable Development’

Trieste, Italy, 10-12 May 2007

The Forum builds on the discussion launched at the
St. Petersburg summit on the interconnections between the three components of the triangle of knowledge—education, scientific research and technological innovation—from the perspective of sustainable development, and seeks to identify risks and opportunities for industrialized countries as well as developing and low-income countries.The discussion will be presented by speakers of the highest level from the educational, scientific and entrepreneurial worlds, drawn from G8 countries as well as developing countries. Attention to developing countries will augment the Italian initiative with respect to discussions within the G8 framework. The Forum is intended as an opportunity for discussion and no final document is foreseen.

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hmmph, missed the deadline for this.

Lauren Weinstein’s Blog: Newly Revealed FBI Data Abuses and the Data Retention Red Flag:

Broad abuses of retained data are now demonstrated to be real, not theoretical, as described in .this Washington Post story

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Lauren has a nice post outlining some of his insights and furthering his points about the problems of the governments abuse of information.

Freedom for IP:
Ignite Seattle Video

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this is a good presentation about intellectual freedom, the the freedom to create and innovate.

Internet should be run by key players: new ITU boss | Tech&Sci | Internet | Reuters.com:
The Internet should continue to be overseen by major agencies including ICANN and the ITU, rather than any new “superstructure”, the new head of the International Telecommunications Union said on Friday.Hamadoun Toure, who took up the reins of the United Nations agency this month, said the ITU would focus on tackling cyber-security and in narrowing the “digital divide” between rich and poor countries.

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or perhaps… it should be run by …. its users?

Reforming U.S. Patent Policy – Council on Foreign Relations:
The conversation on American competitiveness is often intertwined with the conversation on innovation. The liberalization of trade and the increasing influence of emerging markets such as China and India have meant that U.S. innovation is now competing globally. This global competition has raised awareness and concerns not only that our trading partners are lax on patent enforcement, but also that our patent system may not be optimally suited to compete on the global economic stage.

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This is one of the most important debates going on in our world and this report makes a substantive contribution.

The $100 laptop: What went wrong – MSN Money:

Anyway, in general a free computer to everyone on the planet it interesting. The tool is cool. And there are many massively problematic issues involved. But that’s interesting is that this article is publishe din MSN Money. MSN isn’t part of this. I’ve read the M$ does not like open source. I wonder how much big computing, like big oil and big tobacco is willing to thumb the nose at doing something good (Gate’s work on aids in africa is not part of this debate of course) useful when it might get in the way of a little well planned out hegemony. But that’s just my personal opinion on it.

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This is one place where i disagree with Jason. The ‘cool tool’ is not a solution, it is a distraction from more serious infrastructural and educational issues and the ‘leapfrog’ of those infrastructures that it ‘represents’ actually will be impossible. I don’t think big computing is actually against this, in fact, most of them have bought in. You see, you don’t sell these things to people… You sell them to governments and the money that comes from governments will be be backed by other governments, so there is no real possibility of profit/loss . The economics of this project looks great, I think, for companies. The future of these objects as computers… is not great. The design is completely wrong for any use outside of a clean, classroom environment. It has too many moving parts and it is ‘american cool’ instead of globally useful. If you look at army troop laptops, designs that actually work in diverse environments…. they do not look like this and there is a good reason for that….. Design is one issue with OLPC, but there are certainly major socio-political implications… I’ve written on that before here. I think… OLPC is a bad program and mainly exists as a promotional tool. Putting the same money into the Million-book project’s bookmobiles would be far more productive.

Largest archive of free culture to be built in the Netherlands:
From the Netherlands, the “Images for the Future” project is building a large-scale conservation and digitization project to make available 285,000 hours of film, television, and radio recordings, as well as more than 2.9 million photos from the Netherlands’ film and television archives. A basic collection drawn from the archive will be made available on the Internet either under CC licenses, or in some cases, in the public domain. The Government of the Netherlands, a long time supporter of the local Dutch CC project, will invest a total of 173 million Euros over a seven-year period. Their aim is to spur innovative applications with new media, while providing valuable services to the public.
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this will be great… free content is the backbone of innovation and production.