Science in the Age of Digital Networking

Abstract

Today, the world is moving fast, but we do not know exactly where this leads yet. As the economy of knowledge inevitably extends its tentacles on the realm of science, what are we –scientists- going to do? So far, an increasingly large number of critical voices are pointing out vast transformations that are occurring in the way that science, and scientists, perform their activity and especially how such activity is disseminated and valued. These changes are very likely associated with the sheer size of a global science system, and to the growing connectivity of scientists, that corresponds to very fast mutations operated in society by the omnipresence of the Internet and of portable computer devices. Indeed, many aspects of life like book reading, traveling, and social dating have been transformed beyond recognition in the last ten years. Now, a few companies such as Amazon and Facebook can manage in an instant the information and opinion of millions of people that in turn influences the way each person’s decisions are made. Correspondingly, the complex processes of scientific peer review and publishing of scientific papers are reduced to a matter of weeks. Dissemination takes an instant. Is speed the main criterion for the evolution of knowledge?