Dear Moises, Ken, and FIS colleagues,
First of all, thanks to you two for chairing the discussion session.
Also, for a different matter, to Raquel del Moral. She has been working
with me in the complete archive of fis messages and recapitulating the
whole fis discussion-sessions celebrated (starting by the the "virtual
conference" long ago, in 1998). It is a big novelty in the fis webpage.
Please, have a glance at: http://fis.sciforum.net/fis-discussion-sessions/
Hopefully it will allow quite many future bibliometric studies...
A closer relationship between classical information/library science and
a renewed information science as was attempted in the session is
important. Organizing the stock of accumulated knowledge in this epoch
of multidisciplinarity, of instant data access, of increasing research
complexity, of pervasive big data, of massive innovation, etc. should
imply new thinking styles and a new reflection on the individual mind
versus the aggregate system of collective intelligence. Unfortunately I
do not see much advancement in that matter --even the opposite. The talk
about the "global brain" is superficial at best. The attentional
saturation of the social environment during the last decade is strongly
diminishing the individual capabilities for really creative thought and
deep interdisciplinary engagement (for instance, less and less
interesting new books). The dangers inherent in the "mechanization of
knowledge", as was warning a celebrated essay by Harold Innis (McLuhan's
mentor), could become real in our time.
So, if the above lamentations have a grain of truth, we have not much
succeeded in the ongoing discussion. If the new mission of library
science, hand to hand with the new information science, should also
include the qualitative thinking on the social and institutional
conditions for advancement of knowledge in its widest sense (humanist
too), we have a lot of pending work to do. I hope not to be sounding
pessimistic! I was motivated by some recent comment of an Indian
researcher (Sunita Narain) on waste management: "the key obstacle is
that everyday challenges are not top priorities for research and
innovation. Indian science has always been fascinated by the 'masculine'
agendas of space and genetics, not reinventing the toilet. Instead,
science must meet the needs of poor people. We need to devise ways to
prevent pollution rather than cleaning it up afterwards. Indian research
has to be more humble, nimble and investigative... India's ambition
should be to become front-runner in the race to save the planet."
(Nature 2015, vol. 521, pp:155)
Best--Pedro
Moisés André Nisenbaum wrote:
Dear FIS Colleagues,
First, I want to thank Pedro and everyone the opportunity to
introduce, participate and observe the development of debate “THE
FOURTH GREAT DOMAIN OF SCIENCE: INFORMATIONAL?”
I spent the last days documenting the posts related to this
discussion. On this basis, I will present some numbers and comments
about these rich discussions.
--
-------------------------------------------------
Pedro C. Marijuán
Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud
Centro de Investigación Biomédica de Aragón (CIBA)
Avda. San Juan Bosco, 13, planta X
50009 Zaragoza, Spain
Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 (& 6818)
pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es
http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
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