From: Spudboy100@aol.com
Date: Sat Jul 27 2002 - 14:06:00 MDT
Joao Magalhaes observed:
<<But how can you use it to predict breakthroughs? I mean, you will need to
wait years to have an idea of the impact of a paper. Perhaps a better
measure would be to calculate the diversity of papers. For example, we now
have fields -- e.g. bioinformatics -- that we didn't have a 10 or 20 years
ago. Of course the question is how to calculate scientific diversity?
Perhaps we can count the number of different course at Universities? Now
I'm sure that has increased in recent years. A higher degree of
specialization might lead to new discoveries in broader fields. Anyway, I'm
starting to think that having a faith in future technological progress is
no different than having a faith in God. Now I feel depressed.>>
What may serve you best is not merely a transhumanist orientation, but a
format geared toward technological forecasting, such as the older, futurist
groups; who would consider facets such as uploading, a bit fringe. As far as
straight-out technical forecasting, there are companies who dwell in this
area, such as Battelle Labs in Colimbus, Ohio and the MITRE group, just to
cite two examples.
Your comment about "faith" is incisive, indeed, because much of the
forecasting done by journalists is faulty; simply because they have a story
to produce, rather then an analysis to formulate.
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