Las revista GOOD proporciona visions diferents de temes d’actualitat que aporten elements novedosos. Per exemple, la seva sèrir sobre el valor de la compartició (value of sharing).
En una entrada recent en aquesta sèrie, el químic Peter Murray (informàtic molecular) de la Universitat Cambridge fa una reflexió mesurada sobre les dades en química, la dificultat d’accedir-hi, la manca de voluntad o la dificultat de compartir-les, i sobre la seva percepció de la compartició del coneixement:
There are two or three objective problems; one is that making data available is not trivial. It’s easier to make a single document (a copy of your publication, for example) available, than it is to package your data in a way that other people would want to use it. So there are technical aspects. There’s also inertia. It’s not common for many scientists to share their data; they don’t realize the value of doing it. So they need to change the way in which they work and the culture of how they reach out to people. Of course many scientists are naturally competitive because funding depends on publication; the more you get published, the more you are likely to receive. So people are naturally jealous of their results and in many cases, they don’t want to make their data available because then their competitors might be able to see things in their data that they hadn’t been able to see.
Murray dóna la seva opinió sobre la diferència entre els segles XX i XXI:
There has been a history of controlling data through commercial means, and there are a lot of organizations which up until now have made an income by collecting data from the community and then packaging it and selling it back. That was a reasonable thing to do in the 20th century. But in the 21st century, so much information is now born digital that it makes sense to think of an economy where as we create the data, we release it to the community rather than locking it up.
Al Segle XXI, hi ha tanta informació que ja ha nascut en forma digital, que té tot el sentit de món oferir-lo a la comunitat de seguida, en lloc de tancar-lo en una capsa.
Ara bé… dades, informació, coneixement… no són coses ben bé iguals. Segurament la competitivitat del món actual farà que el grau de compartició de cada cosa sigui diferent.
(foto de l’entrada de Good.Is)