Science in the 21st Century

The Perimeter Institute will be hosting a workshop in September on "Science in the 21st Century":

Times are changing. In the earlier days, we used to go to the library, today we search and archive our papers online. We have collaborations per email, hold telephone seminars, organize virtual networks, write blogs, and make our seminars available on the internet. Without any doubt, these technological developments influence the way science is done, and they also redefine our relation to the society we live in. Information exchange and management, the scientific community, and the society as a whole can be thought of as a triangle of relationships, the mutual interactions in which are becoming increasingly important.

This is being organizaed by Sabine Hossenfelder, Michael Nielsen and Lee Smolin, so they know a little bit about the topic. The list of participants is certainly an interesting one:

There are a lot of smart and interesting people on that list, and I'm really looking forward to hearing what they have to say. Actually, I'm really looking forward to hearing what I have to say, because I have no idea...

If you'd like to find out what I come up with, registration is now open...

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Who's that idiot from PLoS? ;-)

It will be great to see you there again Chad. Perhaps we can spend some more time chatting than last year in NYC.

Dude, I can meet you in person?! (I live in Waterloo)

Borrowing a line from Dinosaur Comics, "I would like to meet and say "i like your website", scuffing my feet on the ground, all bashfully."

The entirety of the literature can be punctiliously searched in no more than an afternoon. A nasty crystal structure (not protein) takes a day or two at most. Multidimensional NMR, EPR; polarized neutron magnetic probes. Quantum everything on an optical bench at worst. TeraFLOPS computation at will, gigaFLOPS for free. 10^(-9) relative routine sensitivity. Any temp from nanodegrees to megadegrees; megagauss at will, megabar pressures, too.

What is worth asking? Religion has one loud answer - nothing. That is no better than string theory. We've got to do better.