Dick Sblog

The International Science Grid This Week (iSCTW) sounds like an esoteric publication for grid computing geeks. In fact its offers fascinating insights into the ways in which new computing infrastructures and applications are being brought to bear on a wide range of problems. This week’s iGSTW carries a piece about ‘citizen cyberspace‘, about how, with volunteer computing, we are about to enter an era of citizen science.

The article leads with the example of Rytis Slatkevicius, an MBA student by day, who, in 2006 when he was ony 18, had assembled the world’s largest database of prime numbers — those which are only divisible by themselves and one. He had done this by harnessing the spare processing power of computers belonging to thousands of prime-number enthusiasts, using the internet. These days professional mathematicians collaborate with him, using the power of his volunteer computing network, PrimeGrid, to address significant problems.

There are nearly 100 science projects using such volunteer computing. Like PrimeGrid, most are based on an open-source software platform called BOINC with volunteer computing. Many address topical themes, such as modelling climate change  with ClimatePrediction.net, developing drugs for AIDS with FightAids@home, or simulating the spread of malaria with MalariaControl.net.

This volunteer computing approach is also facilitating fundamental science projects. For example,  Einstein@Home analyzes data from gravitational wave detectors, MilkyWay@Home simulates galactic evolution, and LHC@home studies accelerator beam dynamics.

These projects leverage a sense of online community. BOINC provides enthusiastic volunteers with message boards to chat with each other and share information about the science behind the project. This is strikingly similar to the sort of social networking that happens on websites such as Facebook, but with a scientific twist. BOINC also provides a credit system, which measures how much processing each volunteer has done — turning the project into an online game where they can compete as individuals or in teams. Again, there are obvious analogies with popular online games such as Second Life.

This is real science, being done by all sorts of real people collaborating together across geographic and political boundaries; people motivated by a sense of enquiry and wonder whose interactions are made possible by social networking.

Jorge Luis Borges wrote, “there is nothing written that has not been written before”. I’ve just had an illustration of this in a newsletter from Futurelab. It describes one of their programmes, Digital Participation, which “is designed to devise, pilot and review practical classroom approaches that can support children to create as well as communicate using ICT; in other words, be active participants.”

Well, there you go….

Way back in the 90’s, in educational internet history, the Web for Schools project demonstrated this very fact. We gave our students the tools, the freedom and the support to create and off they went. They were active participants; self-motivated and self-directed learners (there weren’t any tools then, they just had to learn raw coding) and they created lots of interesting. And what’s more, they did it collaboratively, in teams.

There’s nothing much new under the sun.

In a world where competition has been seen as the way to achieve efficiency and high performance, it’s a relief to find examples that illustrate the fact that it’s actually collaboration that moves us on. The recent global concern about a flu pandemic has prompted an initiative by researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch to run virtual chemistry experiments on the World Community Grid in order to identify the chemical compounds most likely to attach to influenza viruses and stop them from spreading.

The necessary computational work adds up to thousands of years of computer time, but will be compressed into just months using World Community Grid, a facility provided by IBM and thousands of volunteers around the world who are prepared to donate their computers’ spare processing capacity for projects that are of community benefit (this could include you…)

You can read the story here.

I’ve just read an interview with with Jill Nemiro, Author of “Creativity in Virtual Teams”. She makes some interesting points about making space for creativity to take place, as well as about the ways in which virtual teams operate. Here are a few quotes from the interview:

“…most people do not take the time to allow their creative thoughts to spring forth. And creativity takes time. It takes silence; it takes us to create space between the constant chatter of our daily thoughts.

…Of course, we all need to work to meet deadlines. But there has to be enough time scheduled into these deadlines to allow for creative thoughts to develop.

The fact is that people have been working virtually with less advanced technology for many years.

A team is first and foremost defined with the characteristics of interdependence, shared values and common goals. Without those, whether you are working virtually or not, I don’t consider you a team.

…When I started interviewing virtual team members, I learned from them that creativity and efficiency do not always go hand in hand. That sometimes there are tasks where creativity can actually be a waste of time, and eat up energy that should be saved for a task where creativity is really necessary.

In creativity research, there does seem to be some confusion around the terms creativity and innovation. Some refer to creativity as the thinking up of ideas, and innovation as the implementation of those ideas. …what I don’t like about leaving solution implementation out of the creative process is that it might imply creativity stops there, which it does not.

The iterative approach and modular approach can be used together, and at different stages of the project life cycle. I tell my student teams that they need to start by brainstorming together. Then once they have worked through the idea generation stage, they can assign parts of the project to be parceled out for development; thus use the modular approach here. However, it is also crucial to include iterative discussions and reviews during the development stage.

Not all individuals are comfortable, or even want to work in virtual teams. And of course there are many different forms that virtual teams take.Virtual teams require team members who are self-driven, responsible, and proactive.

It is imperative that team members are clear on what the team and organizational goals are, and on the tasks that need to be taken to accomplish those goals”.

At last, someone has taken the trouble to express how I feel about twitter

Here’s an issue of importance: As technology has played a bigger role in our lives, our skills in critical thinking and analysis have declined, while our visual skills have improved. This is the view according to Patricia Greenfield, UCLA distinguished professor of psychology and director of the Children’s Digital Media Center, Los Angeles.

Among her many comments she says, “…most visual media are real-time media that do not allow time for reflection, analysis or imagination — those do not get developed by real-time media such as television or video games. Technology is not a panacea in education, because of the skills that are being lost”.

“Studies show that reading develops imagination, induction, reflection and critical thinking, as well as vocabulary,” Greenfield said. “Reading for pleasure is the key to developing these skills. Students today have more visual literacy and less print literacy. Many students do not read for pleasure and have not for decades.”

Parents should encourage their children to read and should read to their young children, she said.

I couldn’t agree more.

You can read a summary of her research here

If that’s not an oxymoron…

Anyway, there’s an interactive ‘Intelligent Car Quiz’, informing players about modern, ICT-based safety and green vehicle technologies. It’s available in 6 languages, so there’s no excuse for you not to go there and find out how cars could contribute to saving the planet

(As if !)

Back from Borneo after a very successful expedition, I was faced with a virtual mountain of email. Tucked away in my inbox was a message from my old friend Robin Hanbury-Tenison. Robin led the 1977-78 Royal Geographical Society Expedition to the Gunung Mulu National Park in Sarawak, on the island of Borneo. Although I wasn’t on that trip, the discoveries made by a small group of my friends sparked a 30 year love affair on my part - returning again and again to explore the network of caves within Mulu’s hollow-mountains.

For those who don’t know, Mulu now contains the largest natural underground chamber in the world , Sarawak Chamber,  (which is big enough to accommodate 42 jumbo-jets without overlapping their wings) and also the 6th largest Chamber; it has the largest single cave passage in the world, Deer Cave, and the longest cave in S.E.Asia, Clearwater. The Clearwater System, which has been the focus of much of our work in recent years, is now 177.6km in length, which makes it the 8th longest cave in the world. You can find out more on the Mulu Caves Project website.

That original expedition fielded a huge, multi-disciplinary team of scientists who, for 15months, studied Mulu’s beautiful rainforests. The expedition was a stunning success.

In another email, I found that my co-Director had won a contract for me to write a business plan for an educational initiative in the south west. This project aims to bring together small groups of highly-skilled graduates from around the world to work in multi-disciplinary teams undertaking commercial projects. The benefits to the students will be to gain production experience in a high-pressure commercial environment, to learn from each other and to spin out novel ideas to meet the needs of their clients and to generate new innovations. The benefit to their clients will be to have access to that concentration of expertise and creativity, an innovation-tank to solve their challenges.

It’s that last point that’s important. By bringing together people from different disciplines and varied backgrounds, you have the opportunity to apply different perspectives, different ideas and novel thinking; team members spark ideas off each other and innovation is the outcome.

With the challenges facing society - economic meltdown, climate change, mass population migrations, water conflict, peak oil, food shortages (need I go on) we need more opportunities for multi-disciplinary approaches, more chances to bring together creative thinkers, more hope that we can overcome some of the challenges facing us or, more particularly, facing our children.

Anyway, back to Robin’s email… it was a request for me to support the Beagle Campaign. I did so with great enthusiasm and I suggest that you do, too.

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Miri airport, Sarawak.

I’m sitting at a table in a well-known brand of global coffee shop, about to go cyber-incommunicado for 3 weeks in the heart of the Mulu National Park, exploring more of the world’s greatest caves.

It’s a novel experience these days – there’s no internet connection, no GSM network and, as we are based in a steep gorge, a satphone connection for only about 3 minutes at a time, if you’re lucky, as a satellite passes directly overhead. We haven’t got one anyway, so that’s irrelevant on this trip.

It’s such a difference from my first trip here in 1980. Then it was a 3 day journey on ferry and outboard powered-canoe to reach the Park, the great brown Baram River meandering through seemingly endless forest - now it’s a 40 minute plane ride over cleared land and palm plantations.. Then our base camp was a simple wooden structure with a tin roof – now on the same location is the 180 bed Royal Mulu Resort. Then, a trip into Deer Cave, the largest single cave passage in the world, was a rare privilege – now hundreds of tourist go there to watch the spectacular evening flight of bats (and there is even a live webcam, focused on their roost).

In those days, when I set out on an expedition, work was left behind as a distant memory – now I’m accessible online right up to the Park HQ and this netbook will come with me so that I can exploit every useful moment (assuming we have fuel for the generator!)

It’s a shrinking world, in time, space and diversity. I’m not sure that it’s better for it.