The flow of information, its density, volume and accessibility are essential underpinnings to a society’s innovation capacity. In this short series of posts, I’ve taken a historic perspective, looking at the information revolution in the middle ages, and at the technological and societal developments up to the 20th century, before turning to the 21st century and the dominant […]
Integrating citizen science
22 Jul 2014 by 2 Comments
The concept has many names: networked science, crowd-sourced science, crowd science, civic science, or citizen science. All these terms emphasise a specific aspect, and all those aspects play a more or less important role in the overall concept. Let’s see: Networked science – science beyond the ivory tower, it requires interaction with others to progress; the […]
Funding innovation – a broken cycle?
06 Jul 2014 by Leave a Comment
Without a doubt, Clayton Christensen is one of the most prolific thinkers, scholars, and writers on innovation. He is probably best known for having coined the term “disruptive innovation”, but that is only the tip of the iceberg. To get a deeper appreciation of his thinking, I’d encourage you to watch the Clarendon Lecture he gave […]
On literacy
27 Jun 2014 by Leave a Comment
In the previous post, I’ve discussed some flaws in the way that we teach science, and I looked specifically into the effects that those simplified story lines of the science textbooks have on scientists themselves. However, scientists are only a small fraction of the population, and some basic science education is delivered to everybody. The […]
The subtle flaws of science education
25 Jun 2014 by 2 Comments
In his landmark book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Thomas Kuhn describes how the majority of scientific work is actually focused on solving scientific puzzles. That’s what Kuhn calls normal science, and scientists are perfectly trained for and highly efficient in pursuing this endeavour. But there are times when normal science reaches its limits, when anomalies […]
