About
Transapient Musings of an S6 Archailect

Metacognitive trivialities over smooth topologies and Julian knots of subgeometric spaces; a.k.a mastermind Singularitarian, node of the Larger Submind and Clone of the Ineffable Original.

Bryan Bishop
http://heybryan.org/
email: kanzure@gmail.com
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YIM: kanzure
Skype: kanzure
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phone: #1-512-203-0507


Archives

• 2008 (720)
  • April (370)
  • May (257)
  • June (93)

Wed, 11 Jun 2008

The Open Science Web
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David Recordon has a nice, optimistic post about the Open Web. I have long felt that the web is the ultimate platform, and the past few years have only strengthened this opinion, as we make the web more programmable and start leveraging it as a multi-way communication medium (in conjunction with such technologies as XMPP). Much of the tech community is focused on leveraging this web around social networks. My hope is that we in the scientific community can take this to the next level, literally connecting data and information first and then the people.

We are producers and consumers of data. The data lies in our labs, in our papers, in central repositories, on web sites and services; a mishmash of static and dynamic data of all types. We use these data to derive information and hypotheses. Call me conceited but as a scientific community we are probably the stewards of a decent, important, chunk, of the worlds collective intelligence. Except that now we have the ability to bring a distributed collective intelligence to life. What do we need?

1. An open data web: We are getting there. I am convinced that this is inevitable and more optimistic as time goes on. Not only is the open data web a necessary requirement for us to arrive at the next era in scientific discovery, it will be the primary driving engine. In the sciences, especially the life sciences, the Semantic Web is going to play a key role in how we find data and relationships, not only among pieces of data, but bringing people and knowledge together
2. Participation: Not just from the early adopters, but the scientific community at large. I am actually less optimistic about this, although I have a feeling that’s just my cynical side. We have an opportunity here folks to really take the next step to solving new problems, leveraging our distributed knowledge
3. Bursty Work: This is my mantra, but needs participation. In discussions about The BioGang, the issue of critical mass has come up, but if you look at what’s been happening recently, we are slowly taking steps there. A community of software savvy scientists, eventually tapped into wet lab scientists can truly come together for what I hope will be a new era of science. Is it going to happen in the next five years? I seriously doubt it, but we’re just planting seeds at this time. A decade? Now we’re talking. Will be fun to see what happens

Aside: After meeting Matt Wood, discussions with Pawel over time, and seeing the activity over on FriendFeed, I am even more optimistic that we can have an impact as a community of like minded geeks with a diversity of interests and skills.

Technorati Tags: Open Web, Open Science, Bursty Work

ShareThis

Sat, 07 Jun 2008

Biotech toolkit howto video


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXKbzbeipmI

The biotech toolkit includes information on do-it-yourself (DIY) experimentalism in biotech, science, pharmacology, biogerontology, fighting diseases, or making new genes to do interesting things. This video instructs linux users, particularly debian users, on getting up to speed on git. There's a lot more information out there on git, so check out:

http://savannah.gnu.org/maintenance/U...
http://kerneltrap.org/Linux/Git_on_Windows
http://www.sourcemage.org/Git_Guide
http://git.or.cz/gitwiki/InterfacesFrontendsAndTools

And for the diybio communities?

http://biohack.sf.net/
http://heybryan.org/mediawiki/
http://heybryan.org/exp.html
http://diybio.org/
http://openwetware.org/
http://biopunk.org/
http://biodatabase.org/

Here are the git-specific files:
http://heybryan.org/gitweb.cgi
http://heybryan.org/biotech.git

There's also an IRC channel (#hplusroadmap on freenode). http://freenode.net/ http://irchelp.org/

posted at: 19:26 | path: /open | permanent link to this entry

Wed, 28 May 2008

Congress Pushes Participatory Exploration
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National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act of 2008 (Introduced in House) H.R.6063

"SEC. 407. PARTICIPATORY EXPLORATION. (a) In General- The Administrator shall develop a technology plan to enable dissemination of information to the public to allow the public to experience missions to the Moon, Mars, or other bodies within our solar system by leveraging advanced exploration technologies.

1. Rep. Mark Udall [D-CO] (www) (contact)
2. Rep. Tom Feeney [R-FL] (www) (contact)
3. Rep. Barton Gordon [D-TN] (www) (contact)
4. Rep. Ralph Hall [R-TX] (www) (contact (email))

Fri, 11 Apr 2008

PublicRecordsWire - open access portal
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PublicRecordsWire is an "an open system for cataloging, sharing and discovering new public records databases." Users can search, tag, and rate the databases, browse by tags, category, and popularity, and add new databases. (Thanks to Abbie Mulvihill.)

posted at: 23:33 | path: /openaccess | permanent link to this entry

10 university collections on YouTube
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OpenCulture has posted links to 10 university collections on YouTube.

Top 80 charities for open source and open access advocates
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The open source revolution calls for a free, unregulated Internet that allows the public free access to design, develop and share software programs and information. These 80 charities and nonprofit organizations foster the open source spirit through education programs, fundraising practices and promotional techniques in order to transform the Internet into a more democratic entity.

Most Popular

These organizations are some of the most popular open source nonprofits on the Web.

1. Wikipedia: Most non-techies don’t realize it, but Wikipedia is actually an open source charity. Based on a system of free information sharing, anyone can edit posts, submit images and create articles.
2. SourceForge.net: Users of SourceForge.net are encouraged to “create, participate [and] evaluate.” Ongoing projects are categorized by clustering, desktop, financial, games networking, security, and more.
3. Open Source Initiative: This nonprofit organization was “formed to educate about and advocate for the benefits of open source and to build bridges among different constituencies in the open-source community.” Use their website to learn more about open source, make a donation or get involved with different projects.
4. Open Source with Christopher Lydon : Readers and members of this popular web community help produce a daily radio show about everything from world politics to literature to entertainment.
5. The Open Group: This “vendor-neutral and technology-neutral consortium” aims to connect global enterprises through the free, uninterrupted flow of shared information.
6. Calgary Open Source Group: This online social network also supports open source software technology, spreading the word about its unique culture.
7. The Utah Open Source Collective: The Utah Open Source Collective is a nonprofit organization that relies on volunteers to maintain an organization that works towards improving technology, sharing information and spreading the word about open source.
8. .netTiers: Download free code generation templates from this open source organization.
9. Software in the Public Interest: SPI promotes open source by helping organizations develop open hardware and software for their businesses.
10. The Apache Software Foundation: Apache users can find support for software programs and projects at The Apache Software Foundation, an online “community of developers and users.”
11. XFree86 Project: Volunteers involved in the XFree86 Project produce the XFree86, which is widely used “freely redistributable open source implementation of the X Window System.”
12. OpenSourceCommunity.org: This community strives to “make the world a “little” better place.” Become a member (don’t worry, it’s free!) and find yourself part of an online networking system which focuses on information sharing and technology.

Education Programs

The more we educate children about technology and the Internet, the more computer proficient individuals continue to revolutionize open source software and communities. These education programs are devoted to broadening the world’s understanding of how computers and the Internet impact society.

13. Internet Society: The Internet Society sponsors all kinds of workshops and training programs to help communities, including those in underprivileged nations, better utilize the Internet.
14. CyberSmart!: CyberSmart! provides free curriculum to teachers in grades K-8 to help their students learn “to use the Internet safely, responsibly and effectively.”
15. The Internet and Your Child: This program helps parents teach Internet safety to their children.
16. Apple Learning Interchange: This social network connects teachers who want to discover new methods and tools for educating their students on computer technology.
17. West Virginia Tools for Schools Elementary: This successful program brings computers and the Internet into the classrooms of West Virginia.
18. Education Program for Gifted Youth: Stanford University’s EPGY invites gifted students from around the world to participate in an “individualized educational experience” that offers courses in subjects like computer science.
19. Help the Afghan Children: This nonprofit organization sponsors a computer education program to help Afghans catch up with the “global information technology revolution” and contribute to the computer industry.
20. One Laptop Per Child: This admirable organization lists as its mission to “provide children around the world with new opportunities to explore, experiment and express themselves.”
21. ERIC: ERIC, or the Education Resources Information Center, is a government-sponsored online library full of educational resources for teachers. Lesson plans and ideas for computer exercises are also available.
22. Education World Technology Integration: This website provides teachers with all kinds of computer resources for implementing technology in the classroom, including the Internet, typing, and more.
23. Steve Wozniak’s Los Gatos School District Adoption: Macintosh founder Steve Wozniak has donated technology equipment to California’s Los Gatos School District to help introduce children to the world of computers.

Design and Development Groups

Below you will find nonprofit organizations dedicated to the improvement of open source standards and software development.

24. Open Source Web Design: This nonprofit allows visitors to download free web design templates. Search by designer or keyword to find new favorites.
25. GNU: The GNU Operating system is a Unix-based os that features free software. Users have the freedom to run the program study, learn how the program works, redistribute copies and discover new ways to improve the program.
26. Open Source Applications Foundation: The OSAF works with the Chandler Project to design open source software for small group collaboration. Applications include a Desktop application, a server and the Chandler Hub Sharing Service, which provides PIM services online for free.
27. Open Source Geospatial Foundation: This foundation helps support Web-based community projects like the development of its own open source geospatial software. Designers and developers are encouraged to share plans and ideas for the benefit of the foundation and their own projects.
28. XMPP Standards Foundation: Instant messaging is another part of the Internet that open source advocates try to protect against privatization and corporate exploitation. The XMPP Standards Foundation works to “define open protocols” for instant messaging programs and encourages free information sharing between designers, developers and programmers.
29. The Free BSD Foundation: The Unix-based BSD operating system relies on this foundation to fund its research and developments so that the public may continue to use its services.
30. TuxPhone: The TuxPhone project aims to create a totally open source cell phone in order to create new applications for phones.
31. Blender: This “free open source 3D content creation suite” recently produced the world’s first open source movie, Elephant Dreams.
32. openEHR: The openEHR Foundation promotes “future-proof and flexible EHR specifications” for the health care industry.

Lobbying Charities

These charities are proactive about sharing news and information about open source with the government and the public.

33. The Free Software Foundation: The FSF “is dedicated to promoting computer users’ rights to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs.” Get involved with current campaigns like Defective By Design, which plans to eliminate DRM, or the appeal to various governments to utilize OpenDocument.
34. Oasis: The Oasis organization is a nonprofit group that aims to improve the development and use of open source technologies around the world. Visit their website to find out how you can participate, or to gain additional information about the various Oasis committees, including ones which tackle issues in security, law and government or computing management.
35. Creative Commons: This nonprofit combines the idealistic views of pure information sharing with secure but privatized creative data. Creative Commons uses “private rights to create public goods” by allowing designers, developers and artists to license their work while making it accessible to the public.
36. Electronic Frontier Foundation: The EFF is a nonprofit organization that actively defends the public’s “digital rights” like free speech and privacy.
37. Hawaii Open Source Education Foundation: HOSEF “promotes and sustains” open source ideas and software through volunteer programs, advocacy, and recycling.
38. International Free and Open Source Software Foundation: The iFOSSF lobbies for open source software in order to improve the economic and social standards of disadvantaged communities by encouraging and supporting the growth of new businesses.
39. XorgFoundation: This “scientific charity” provides “worldwide stewardship of the X Window System technology and standards.” Anyone can become a member to support their cause.
40. The Mifos Initiative: This open source software company pledges its support of the world’s poorest communities by improving the “microfinance industry’s information management challenge.” The Mifos project aims to make this information technology more accessible to microfinance companies so that they can help the poor more effectively.
41. World Wide Web Consortium: This organization is dedicated to “leading the Web to its full potential” by developing open source tools, software and communities. According to The Open Source Community, the W3C supports over 350 member organizations around the world.

Communities

These online communities connect open source advocates from all over the world.

42. MIT Open Source Research Community: Free/open source enthusiasts share research, network and contribute papers and abstracts on this MIT-sponsored site.
43. The Linux Foundation: The Linux foundation was created to protect and promote the open source concepts and developments of Linux. As a nonprofit organization, The Linux Foundation also provides legal services, standardizes Linux software and provides “a neutral forum for collaboration and promotion.”
44. Xiph.org: This nonprofit promotes an unprivatized Internet by “supporting and developing” open software and other tools that the public can access freely. visit their website to find out how you can donate to the cause or participate in new projects.
45. Eclipse: This program fosters “an open source community whose “projects are focused on building an open development platform” that supports tools for developing software. In addition to its online forum, Eclipse also sponsors various summits and DemoCamps each year.
46. Sakai: This Web-based community promotes a “collaboration and learning environment” where users may research, edit, consult and teach issues and documents related to technology.
47. Java-Source.net: Java-Source.net is home to a rich community of programmers and developers who constantly work towards promoting and improving open source technologies. Use the website to check out ongoing projects or to suggest one of your own.
48. Open Web Application Security Project: The OWASP is a “worldwide free and open community focused on improving the security of application software.” Anyone can make suggestions, submit theories and utilize the organization’s resources free of charge.

Miscellaneous Nonprofits

Check this list for open source and open access nonprofits.

49. The Open Source Education Foundation: Children are also encouraged to become proponents of open source technology. This group has been approved by the IRS to educate students in grades K-12 about open source.
50. Free and Open Source Software Foundation of Pakistan: This group is becoming so popular that it is temporarily unable to maintain its own website. To help them get back on their feet, FOSSFP requests that “the international community” continues to support its hosting system, as well as free and open source software technologies.
51. Open Bioinformatics Foundation: The OBF provides free administrative support and open source programming services to the bioinformatics community, which uses computer technology to help solve biological problems.
52. OpenLDAP Foundation: This foundation is a nonprofit organization that receives and manages donations made to benefit the OpenLDAP Project, which develops open source software and Web hosting services.
53. The Foundation of P2P Alternatives: This foundation studies “the impact of Peer to Peer technology and thought on society.” By studying open source networks and communities, the P2P Foundation explores the culture and social progressions of these innovative communities.
54. Free Beer: This popular organization doesn’t pass out frothy pints via your computer screen, but it doesn’t provide free recipe and branding elements which anyone can use or alter.
55. Nonprofit Open Source Initiative: This successful organization pledges “to facilitate and encourage the use of open source software in the nonprofit sector, and to bring nonprofits and open source developers and projects together.”

Free Open Source Software

These groups provide open source software and tools to the public free of charge.

56. civiCRM: Comprehensive CRM packages are often too expensive for small businesses. civiCRM hosts several programs including contact databases, online event registration forms and online fundraising management tools that nonprofit and advocacy groups can download for free.
57. The Mambo Foundation: Mambo provides free CRM downloads to the public on its website. The Mambo Foundation protects the developments of the Mambo company and its online community of supporters, designers and programmers.
58. The Mozilla Foundation: The Mozilla Foundation protects open source software like Firefox so that its accessibility to the public is never compromised.
59. TrueCrypt: TrueCrypt provides “free open source disk encryption software for Windows Vista/XP/200 and Linux.”
60. Participatory Culture Foundation: The Internet isn’t the only form of media that is subject to privatization and censorship: TV can also be threatened. The PCF is the organization that develops Miro, a “free open-source desktop video application that is designed to make mass media more open and accessible for everyone.”
61. Plone Foundation: Plone is a completely free open source content management service that is available to the public on the Web. The Plone Foundation supports Plone to ensure that it can and will always remain a public service.
62. Firebird: Firebird software is a relational database that is free to download from the organization’s website. Users are encouraged to modify the software to create their own versions which should also be shared with the online community.
63. OpenGL: Accessing free online games and virtual reality technologies is possible because of the OpenGL organization, which claims to be “the industry standard for high performance graphics.”
64. Kuali Foundation: This nonprofit helps colleges, schools, businesses and other organizations maximize their open source networks and software programs.
65. The RadioActive Foundation: The RadioActive Foundation works to fund and promote the open source software developed under the RFID project, which plans to revolutionize the Internet by creating a new “reference group of applications” for the public.
66. Python Software Foundation: The goal of the PSF is to “promote, protect, and advance the Python programming language, and to support and facilitate the growth of the international community of Python programmers.” Users, developers and donors can all connect at their website.
67. XOOPS: The XOOPS organization is “powered by you.” Support the design program by participating in the forums, making a donation or just spreading the word.
68. Tax Code Software Foundation: Also known as “the Linux of tax software,” Tax Code Software aids U.S. taxpayers in their regular tax organization and preparation.
69. OpenCyc: OpenCyc “is the open source version of the Cyc technology, the world’s largest and most complete general knowledge base and commonsense reasoning engine.” Download software or participate in ongoing discussions on their website to support open source technologies.
70. Open Channel Foundation: Academic communities use Open Channel publishing software to publicize and organize research and teaching documents.
71. Dojo: The Dojo Toolkit is an open source software program that is supported by the Dojo Foundation. By encouraging the program’s adoption, discouraging political contention, encouraging the collaboration and integration with other projects, and remaining a transparent, free access system, the foundation manages to continue providing services to the public.

Social and Political Groups

These social and political groups are also supporters of a free and open Internet.

72. Ron Paul: 2008 presidential candidate Ron Paul strongly believes in the concept of a free Internet, saying, “we should never interfere with the Internet.”
73. Barack Obama: 2008 Democratic candidate Barack Obama is another supporter of net neutrality and a free, unregulated Internet.
74. eLGG: This open source social networking platform fosters a community of designers, programmers, donors and fundraisers who advocate open source technologies.
75. Technology and Social Action Wiki: This wiki creates awareness about how technology impacts social action projects. Social activists can collaborate using this online portal to discuss fundraising issues and more.
76. Really Simple Social Action: Link up with other social activists with this open source community.
77. Politics 2.0: This concept is based on the idea “that social networking and e-participation technologies will revolutionize our ability to follow, support, and influence political campaigns.”
78. Open Source Politics: This article discusses the effects of open source tactics on British government.
79. Open Source Politics Taps Facebook for Myanmar Protests: Learn how political activists are instantly mobilized with the help of open source technologies.
80. Open Source Political Manifesto: In an online experiment, Halfbakery challenges users to create political manifestos based on open source concepts. Readers will continue to vote on their favorite manifestos, creating a “public forum for non-mainstream political ideas.”

HP Launches FOSSology Open Source Tracking Tool
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cpudney writes "An article in Computerworld UK reports on a new open source analysis initiative launched by Hewlett-Packard. The FOSSology Project's mission is to 'build a community to facilitate the study of Free and Open Source Software by providing free data analysis tools.' The first such tool reports how an open source project is licensed. Rather than simply collecting a project's advertised license, the tool analyzes all of the source code for a given project and reports all of the licenses being used, based on the license declarations and tell-tale phrases that identify software licensing. A video demonstrating the tool applied to abiword is available. The FOSSology source code is licensed under GPLv2."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Open Source Education
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The backers of the Cape Town Open Education Declaration, announced on Tuesday, said the initiative is designed to echo the disruptive effect that open source had on the proprietary software world by opening up the development and distribution of educational materials.

“We have seen over the last 20 years how open-source software, which is produced collaboratively, has been used to solve individual problems but then shared to solve everyone’s problems,” said Shuttleworth. “Today, I hope we will launch a process that will build something similarly compelling but for the educational field. It will be extraordinary one day to have teachers in New Zealand collaborating with students in China to create documents that will be used by learners in South America.”

“Open education allows every person on earth to access and contribute to the vast pool of knowledge on the web,” said Wikipedia founder Wales, one of the authors of the declaration. “Everyone has something to teach and everyone has something to learn.”

Other signatories of the declaration include Peter Gabriel, musician and founder of Real World Studios, and Lawrence Lessig, founder and chief executive of Creative Commons. [+]

UK search engine of human-vetted OA content
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Universities' alternative to Google launched, a press release from the University of Manchester, January 16, 2008.  Excerpt:

An internet search engine rivalling the multimillion pound Google is to be launched at the end of January by The University of Manchester's national data centre Mimas.

The free service will add thousands of documents to the 'Intute' service which already allows academics, teachers, researchers and students to search for information relating specifically to their subject area....

At the end of January, researchers will be able to automatically access papers from research databases within universities and other institutions.

The £1.5 million per year collaboration between seven UK Universities and partners - enlists a team of full-time specialists who are scouring the internet.

They are backed by an army of PhD students and a range of organisations - including the massive Wellcome Trust- who have added their own information to the Intute database....

[Intute's Executive Director Caroline Williams] added: "This chimes with calls for open access across the UK....So this database is really a showcase of what the UK academic community has achieved...."

openEHR for electronic health records
openEHR for open EHR standards/specifications

posted at: 23:33 | path: /openaccess | permanent link to this entry

Notes from the Science Blogging conference
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The author of In between the lines has blogged some notes on the North Carolina Science Blogging Conference (Research Triangle Park, January 19, 2008).  See the post on open science and the post on open science in developing nations.

Find Free, Open Apps at Open Source Living [Open Source]
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There are countless arguments for using open source applications, but one of the strongest is having a single interface to learn when working on Windows, Mac or Linux systems. Web site directory Open Source Living helps you find just those kind of programs. It's not an extensive, all-in-one directory, but it seems to narrow its choices based on quality and widespread acceptance. And while not every application listed at Open Source Living is entirely cross-platform, a good deal of them are. For more free or open source applications, check out a Windows and Mac free software bonanza.

Calling on librarians to improve Wikipedia and Wikia
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Mark Chillingworth, Wales urges librarians to help build better Wikipedia, Information World Review, January 17, 2008.  Excerpt:

Jimmy Wales, one of the founders of online encyclopaedia phenomenon Wikipedia, has called on librarians to become deeply involved in the web-based communities that surround his products....

Wales is looking to improve the quality of information available to Wikipedia users, and to extend the number of languages that Wikipedia can be read in.

To do this, he is calling on information professionals to form and join Wikipedia Academies, which are working with communities across the world teaching wiki editing skills. Wales hopes that they will create a generation of wiki editors who will drive up standards.

Academies in South Africa and Germany have already appeared.

“Librarians are not engaging with the Academies,” Wales complained.  “If libraries throughout the world formed regional groups and made an effort, they would be playing a positive role within Wikipedia.  The job of the librarian is about highlighting the weaknesses and strengths of information.”

Wales is also looking to harness the expertise of information professionals to improve web search results....

Selling what's free
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David Gallagher, On eBay, Some Profit by Selling What’s Free, New York Times, December 28, 2007.  Excerpt:

While scouring eBay for interesting Christmas presents a while back, I found and bought a DVD of a film made in 1954 about my home town of Doylestown, Pa. After it arrived I went searching for more information about it — and found the entire film, available as a free download from the nonprofit Internet Archive.

It turned out that the eBay seller had simply downloaded the movie file, burned it onto a DVD and stuck it in the mail. And he was doing the same with a wide range of other public-domain material: military truck manuals from World War II, PowerPoint presentations on health matters from government doctors, vaudeville shorts from the late 1800’s.

The seller’s name is Jeffrey....In an interview, Jeffrey said that he spends 20 to 30 hours a week working on his eBay business....He wouldn’t say how much money he makes, but indicated that it was worth the time he was putting into it.

Jeffrey’s auction listings do say the material is in the public domain, and he acknowledges that it is all out there on the Web for those who know where to find it. But he said some of his customers were people who might not know how to turn a downloaded file into something they could watch on a TV or play on a CD player. Some have dial-up Internet connections that would choke on a 600-megabyte compilation of technical manuals. Others don’t have the time or expertise to search for specific information....

Brewster Kahle, the digital librarian of the Internet Archive and a co-founder of the organization, said his group had no problem with people selling material from its online collection in this way....

Also see the reader comments at the end of the story, especially this one from Rick Prelinger, founder of the Prelinger Archives:

The Doylestown film is from our archives, which we support by selling stock footage. Though I’d prefer that people put out higher-quality DVDs than they generally do, and fervently wish they’d be open about where their source material came from (most of the cheap DVD vendors get hazy when describing sources), the public domain is the public domain. If you have a legally acquired copy of a public domain work, you can do with it what you please; this freedom makes possible quotation, anthologies, mashups and cultural innovation.

By the way, paying for public domain works isn’t so unusual — don’t we still pay for editions of Dickens, Mark Twain and Flaubert?

Harnessing the an intellectual commons to master complexity
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John Wilbanks, Complexity and the Commons, John Wilbanks' blog, January 9, 2008.  (Thanks to Glyn Moody.)  Excerpt:

...[I've been] preoccupied with the reasons for why it takes so long and costs so much to get a drug to market....

I am very skeptical that the law is the key, single solution here. Mainly because I believe the law is only a symptom of the big problem. I do believe that the commons itself is the solution, but not because of intellectual property.

It’s the solution because it’s an incredibly efficient way to generate knowledge rapidly, at low costs. And knowledge is what we need. A commons is the infrastructure for distributed collaboration and innovation in the life sciences, and we should be thinking about the law in terms of how to expose and integrate as much knowledge as possible at the lowest possible transaction cost.

The primary reason drugs are so expensive to discover and develop is that we just don’t know very much about the human body. The problem isn’t the law. To paraphrase Bill Gates, the problem is complexity (read the whole thing, it’s worth it)....

Complexity is the core problem. Human bodies are so mindbogglingly complex that we can’t accurately predict…well, very much of anything about them. There is a knowledge gap a mile wide and ten miles deep between where we are today and a world in which it costs less in terms of time and money to get a drug to market....

As a result, the best way we have to test drugs is to give them to people and see what happens....

The solution to the knowledge gap has, to date, been to simply take more shots on goal. We throw eight million potential drug compounds at a target and check to see what sticks, then we cull the field, again and again, tweaking here and there.

It’s like playing roulette and winning by betting on every square, then patenting the one that wins and extracting high rents from it. Patents are much less the problem in such a scenario than the fact that we are playing roulette. Changing the odds is the better answer – it lowers the pressure to rely on patents! ...

One of the reasons I believe so deeply in the commons approach (by which i mean: contractually constructed regimes that tilt the field towards sharing and reuse, technological enablements that make public knowledge easy to find and use, and default policy rules that create incentives to share and reuse) is that I think it is one of the only non-miraculous ways to defeat complexity. If we can get more people working on individual issues – which are each alone not so complex – and the outputs of research snap together, and smart people can work on the compiled output as well – then it stands to reason that the odds of meaningful discoveries increase in spite of overall systemic complexity.

This is not easy as far as solutions go. It requires open access to content, journals and databases both. It requires that database creators think about their products as existing in a network, and provide hooks for the network, not just query access. It requires that funders pay for biobanks to store research tools. It requires that pharmaceutical companies take a hard look at their private assets and build some trust in entities that make sharing possible. It requires that scientists share their stuff (this is the elephant in the lab, frankly). It requires that universities track sharing as a metric of scientific and societal impact.

It is not easy. But it is, in a way, a very simple change. It just requires the flipping of a switch, from a default rule of “sharing doesn’t matter” to one of “sharing matters enormously”. It is as easy, and as hard, as the NIH mandate on open access. It’s a matter of willpower....

Complexity is the enemy. Distributed innovation, built on a commons, is a strong tonic against that enemy.

Making 2008 the year of open data
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2008 — year of open data, Open Data Commons, January 3, 2008.  Excerpt:

2008 is looking like it will be the year of open data. With the release of the Science Commons protocol, the announcement of CCZero, and of course our project, it looks like there will be quite a few options on the table for licensing data in an open way this year. This is after a long time where there were no good options for those looking at licensing data.

Hopefully we will soon release the draft Public Domain Dedication & Licence for use and then we can start getting some feedback from projects making use of the licence and their experiences. With some early adopters, we can quickly start to see some of the benefits of the public domain approach, and maybe some variations on the Community Norms (you are after all free to roll your own)....

Web 2.0 and open education
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John Seely Brown and Richard P. Adler, Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0, Educause Review, February 2008.  Excerpt:

...Arguably, the most visible impact of the Internet on education to date has been the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement, which has provided free access to a wide range of courses and other educational materials to anyone who wants to use them. The movement began in 2001 when the William and Flora Hewlett and the Andrew W. Mellon foundations jointly funded MIT’s OpenCourseWare (OCW) initiative, which today provides open access to undergraduate- and graduate-level materials and modules from more than 1,700 courses (covering virtually all of MIT’s curriculum). MIT’s initiative has inspired hundreds of other colleges and universities in the United States and abroad to join the movement and contribute their own open educational resources.⁴ The Internet has also been used to provide students with direct access to high-quality (and therefore scarce and expensive) tools like telescopes, scanning electron microscopes, and supercomputer simulation models, allowing students to engage personally in research.

The latest evolution of the Internet, the so-called Web 2.0, has blurred the line between producers and consumers of content and has shifted attention from access to information toward access to other people. New kinds of online resources—such as social networking sites, blogs, wikis, and virtual communities—have allowed people with common interests to meet, share ideas, and collaborate in innovative ways. Indeed, the Web 2.0 is creating a new kind of participatory medium that is ideal for supporting multiple modes of learning....