Issues for Science and Engineering Researchers in the Digital Age (2001) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
A Revolution in the Tools of Scientific and Engineering Research
A Revolution in the Tools of Scientific and Engineering Research
Pages 1-8
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Advanced information technologies have become more than simply faster, more precise, and more automated research tools. They have opened up new ways of learning and communicating for anyone in the business of creating knowledge.
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Public and private networks permit transmission of nearly instant voice, images, and other information to wide audiences around the world and all at low cost. And digital technology continues to advance at a nearly inconceivable rate.
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Specialized information previously unavailable to the general public is now available. For example, the Library of Congress is mounting its collections on the World Wide Web; the National Institutes of Health offers medical information to everybody, not only doctors; and the Cornell University Legal Information Institute Web site emphasizes service to professionals who are not lawyers.
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This kind of simulation, never possible before, has made it routine for researchers to design new drug molecules and test their properties "in silica," understand the complex behavior of networks of brain cells and synaptic clusters in large-scale computer simulations, watch model galaxies collide, and "feel" the forces exerted as a drug docks in a protein. · New ways to represent information have appeared using combinations of written text, dynamic images, and sound.
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Those boundaries are shifting strongly, and cannot be discerned with confidence, but some generalizations are possible. Universities The evolving applications of information technology offer opportunities for cooperative relationships among widely dispersed people who are interested in sharing new experiences and intellectual pursuits.
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Electronic Publication Scientific and engineering journals are being supplemented, and in some cases supplanted, by digital forms of publication, both formal and informal. Most journals today have electronic counterparts on the Internet, and some have abandoned paper circulation altogether.
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If a journal goes out of business in the paper world, all of its back issues normally remain available and securely indexed in libraries. If the same thing happens in cyberspace, its contents and their cataloging information vanish forever unless systematically archived.
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Individuals will differ in the extent to which they may rely on these evolving networks. The world's universities and their laboratories and other facilities over the next few decades will be joined by new types of institutions, able to exploit the evolving information technology and sometimes competing with them.
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