This is such a wonderful article. Since I first found it on PG's site several months ago, I come back and read it about once a month. Not only is it a good motivator to stay after whatever I'm working on, it's also a great way to make sure I'm working on what I'm interested in. Without fail, it makes me focus on what I really should be doing, which, sadly, is not always what I AM doing.
Wow, I've never read that. Here's my favorite section:
'Since from the time of Newton to now, we have come close to doubling knowledge every 17 years, more or less. And we cope with that, essentially, by specialization. In the next 340 years at that rate, there will be 20 doublings, i.e. a million, and there will be a million fields of specialty for every one field now. It isn't going to happen. The present growth of knowledge will choke itself off until we get different tools.'
It would be cool if scientist could record their research in a machine understandable format. Then people could either state their assumptions or conclusions and the computer would provide the other side, or state what information is missing.
Oh, I know that scientist currently use computers to prove things. I mean as a general method of organizing and correlating knowledge that anyone could use. I've seen a similar project, an ontological Wikipedia, but it's probably too tedious for the general practitioner.
It's a better format, yes, but the original article includes an introduction, and some questions that aren't in that version.
Edit: my mistake; the questions and answers are included in PG's website. I think that's only the intro and the biographical stuff that is not in that version of the article...
"When you are famous it is hard to work on small problems. This is what did Shannon in. After information theory, what do you do for an encore? The great scientists often make this error. They fail to continue to plant the little acorns from which the mighty oak trees grow. They try to get the big thing right off."
