The New Frontier

GuanYin

I'm writing this partly inspired by Bill Bryson's "A Short History Of Time", which I'm halfway through reading, partly by the "Blaster Worm" that I have helped clear off about 20 computers over the past two days and partly by an old Christian Slater film that I loved when I was a teenager.

In case you haven't heard about it, Brysons book is about the history of scientific achievment. How we found out all we know about the science of our universe. Its a pretty good read so far.

What stands out while reading a short history of time, is that lot of the great scientific finidngs that we take for granted were undertaken by people working at home, in makeshift laboratories as a hobby.

While these people were no doubt dedicated scientists, many of them were rich aristocrats who were merely curious about how the world worked. Geology, Geography, Paeleontology and Medicine were all "gentlemans pursuits" in the 18th and early 19th century. Chemistry became fashionable shortly afterwards.
Many of these people made the great discoveries they made because they worked unheeded and unhindered at there leisure and had only their ability, their intellect, their dedication and, I suppose, their wealth to restrict or aid them.

These days grant proposal and the hierarchy of academic life means that, for the most part, scientists will never enjoy the freedom that scientists enjoyed from the early 1700's til the former half of the last century. And in this sense we may never see the ingenuity and depth of discovery that will compare with those times.

Not entirely true I will grant you, but we will never get the acceptance of prodigies in this day and age that we allowed in the past three hundred years. James Watson was 15 years of age when enrolling in University of Chicago in 1943. Go back roughly 100 years and a Belfast man known as William Thompson (Later known as Lord Kelvin) was enrolling in Glasgow University at the age of 10. He was appointed Professor at the same University at the age of 22. There are in fact many more examples of these young prodigies in the past, than you would believe.

My point is (and I realise I have taken a long time to make it) that today, in Chemistry, Biology, Geography and Physics we don't see this type of thing happen. We don't nurture our prodigies in the same way (great and all as CTYI is). Our education systems and rules probably hinder the progress of these youths. I know many primary school teachers that dread the thought of a "gifted child" over one with learning difficulties, as they fear they won't be able to keep him/her occupied.

Great science no longer happens in the home and its much rarer to have the free unhindered passionate spirits like those that made the great discoveries in the past. Science has been institutionalised and research regulated and restricted.

Which brings me to the Movie Quote
"Everything decent's been done. All the great themes have been used up. Turned into theme parks. " - Mark Hunter (Christian Slater) in Pump Up The Volume.

Or so I thought until I encountered the Blaster Worm. When I learned how it worked, I realised that it is the closest so far we have come to mimicing a living organism. It works just like many parasites do. It invades a host be overcoming its immune system and then proceeds to replicate. It does so automatically (the first to do so I believe) and is therefore its lifecycle is as similar to that of a worm parasite in a biological system as has so far be achieved.

It was also, most likely, created in somebodies home. While that person will, if caught, most likely serve a long time in a small enclosed room (and rightly so, I doubt this thing pissed anyone off as more than me), it is worth thinking of what they managed to achieve. While I'm not condoning hacking, or writing worms or viruses, technology and IT is still the only science being practiced by the public at large, many without formal educationin the area. Had it not caused so many problems, and, been part of an illegal act, blaster may have been considered worthy of scientific recognition of a very high order.

I realise its doubtful that anyone will reply (or maybe even read) this. But it is at least food for thought.

cerebus

I'm writing this partly inspired by Bill Bryson's "A Short History Of Time"

I thought it was called "A Short History of Nearly Everything" - maybe you're confusing the title with Hawking's "A Brief History of Time"

These days grant proposal and the hierarchy of academic life means that, for the most part, scientists will never enjoy the freedom that scientists enjoyed from the early 1700's til the former half of the last century. And in this sense we may never see the ingenuity and depth of discovery that will compare with those times.

I agree with you that the modern academic environment may restrict freedom - but something else to consider is the sheer quantity of information available. (Hopefully you'll agree that our scientific knowledge has increased over time!)

It may have been possible to digest and understand the entire sum of human knowledge in the 18th century, but it is a lot harder now*. In many ways, somebody working in a well-established field is building incrementally on the work of many others (even Newton, who presumably fits the bill of the classic uber-scientist, talked about standing on the shoulders of giants)

I think it will be possible for individuals to make large advances in new fields. Even well-defined existing research topics can still be thrown upside-down by an individual. For example, look at the work of Einstein in the early part of this century - the intellectual achievement in developing his theories of relativity was impressive.

There may also be some major leaps forward through synthesis of existing knowledge or disciplines - even the creation of new fields of research. The trick is in finding these synergies between different fields... easier said than done.

Interesting topic though!

[size=-5]* Note: Don't know about you, but I find this incredibly depressing... how cool would it be to know everything![/size]

GuanYin

It is of course A Short Histroy of Nearly Everything. Thats hwat I get reading two books at once.

In fairness I was a little drunk when I wrote that. I can like the drama with a few pints

That said, I do accept that there is more out there to contend with, we are a little less innocent these days. Maybe what I'm trying to say is that some of the romance has gone....

Sarky

Money restricts research these days, where it would have allowed it in the past. As you said, back in the day people did research purely for their own curiosity, and maybe a desire to help people. These days it's hard to research anything unless you can prove that it's worth money to someone.

That annoys me no end. Sure, I don't mind a scientist getting rich off some discovery. But the whole nature of society tends to force people down the most lucrative avenues, rather than what they might be best at, or what might result in the betterment of people. I'd like to add that there's an awful lot of backstabbing and resentment in science now. One scientist hates another for pointing out a flaw, or something. I know it went on in the past but you can't move for vicious politics in today's scientific circles.

You're right about the guy who came up with that worm, Sykeirl. Despicable as it is, it's a sign of a clever mind at work. Maybe if the system was different, he could have gotten a happy job testing security or designing really clever, useful stuff. As it is, he'll probably get a jail sentance and the undying hatred of millions of people. Myself included.

bonkey

Originally posted by Sarky
Maybe if the system was different, he could have gotten a happy job testing security or designing really clever, useful stuff.

Yup. On the other hand, maybe he was just an intelligent-ish ar5ehole who would use his talents to no good end regardless of the system.

Look at it this way - why has no hacker written a worm which tightens the security on the machines it hits, rather than turning them to destructive purposes?

The Blaster worm, incidentally, was nothing terribly interesting from an innovation point of view. Indeed, most of the virii and worms we see today are the "innovative" output of what are little better than skript kiddiez playing with virus toolkits.

jc

SkepticOne

Originally posted by bonkey Look at it this way - why has no hacker written a worm which tightens the security on the machines it hits, rather than turning them to destructive purposes? [/B]

You spoke too soon. From this Reuters article:

New Internet Worm Tries to Patch Windows Hole
Mon August 18, 2003 07:33 PM ET
By Elinor Mills Abreu

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A new computer worm is spreading worldwide through a security hole in Windows -- also used by last week's Blaster worm -- but then patching the hole instead of crashing the system like Blaster does, security experts said on Monday.

The new worm, dubbed "Welchia" or "Nachi," is similar to Blaster, but it purports to patch the hole Blaster exploited to enter into computers in the first place and tries to clean up after Blaster if the computer is infected with it.

Sparks

(even Newton, who presumably fits the bill of the classic uber-scientist, talked about standing on the shoulders of giants)

Yes, but not in the way everyone thinks. He said it as a sarcastic comment to a scientific rival that he was trying to denigrate (the gentleman in question, Robert Hooke, was quite short). Newton wasn't the nicest of people according to the records of those that knew him personally, though it's easy to understand why.

sykeirl, I wouldn't worry. The truly groundbreaking research is still being done with little more than time, a human, and a pencil and paper (or a blackboard). It's just that the confirming experiments require more energy than before and those have to go through grant proposals and so on, because the hardware is expensive.

And remember, the last time someone said "that's it, we've found it all", was a year or three before a german working as a patent clerk published a short paper about the way you couldn't tell gravity from accelleration...

Sarky

Yeah, that was particularly arrogant on our part to say we knew everything.

I always found it funny that after all we've discovered, invented, theorised and all the answers we've found, the only thing we're certain about any more is that we know practically nothing about the universe.

How ironic. The more we discover, the less we really know.:)

bonkey

Yeah, the more we know, the more we know we don't know

jc

Sparks

Or think we can't know bonkey - string theory, for example, can never be directly proven because the string length is less than the planck length and thus is immeasurable.