"*Fiction by Bruce Sterling." In the future, science is like blogging. Also, in the future, fiction is like blogging. Hey, you can figure it out; welcome to network culture.
http://discovermagazine.com/2009/jul-aug/10-in-the-future-doing-science-is-like-blogging
"• Why is this science game so socially important?
"Because science means human progress! Yet fame and influence in science have always depended on “publication.” That means lots of “papers.” Also citation (writing “papers” that other scientists have to talk about in their “papers”). Well, “science papers” are dying in the exact same way that “newspapers” are dying. Furthermore, hardly any of this paper ritual helps the true core of science, which is “really good ideas.”
"A lot of scientific ideas aren’t even “ideas.” They are phony public rituals, like complicated Big Science physics experiments that have 200 authors and cost half a billion euros a pop. Most scientists will secretly agree with us that these schemes don’t much advance science. But the mainstream set have to be respected or else the politicians will stop voting the money. By stark contrast, grand breakthrough discoveries happen when you are, for instance, a penniless patent clerk in Switzerland, daydreaming about elevators moving near the speed of light. Our many contributors are superb at that kind of thing. Just ask us about the “entropic decay in the fabric of space-time.” Yeah, that changed the conceptual nature of the universe—and we found that out right here at MYSTERIOUS DISCOVERY! ..."
