2 ms·
Imagine what effects could cascade throughout society if the slope of the learning curve to master a paper was reduced just a tiny amount. Sure, regular everyda
by tw1010 9y ago
Imagine what effects could cascade throughout society if the slope of the learning curve to master a paper was reduced just a tiny amount. Sure, regular everyday people might not be directly affected by it. But what it would mean is more researchers understanding more papers at a deeper level, and faster since the effort per unit of time invested will have been significantly reduced. It's true that websites have a expiration date. But this is one of those low-hanging fruits where the technology is perfectly mature and the problem is obvious. And the combination of the two could produce massive productivity gains, with relatively little effort, if you just made what Bret is suggesting an habitual norm within academia.
- mygo 9y ago> It's true that websites have a expiration date I’m not so sure about that. Web standards have made it so that the browser you install today can still view the websites that were made when your favorite Super Nintendo game came out. And you wouldn’t print just one copy of a paper ever, so a network of database servers getting destroyed is the equivalent of a bunch of physical libraries getting destroyed. Flash may have gone away but Flash was not a core component of the web spec, like HTML. It was a third-party plug-in.
- caseymarquis 9y agoIt would be the equivalent of creating more random shorts in the graph describing access to new ideas. A more efficient small world network. I have to assume the paper used was chosen for just this reason. I really enjoy that.