Science in the age of selfies

Wednesday. August 31, 2016 - 1 min

Would a time traveler from half a century ago be equally dazzled by the scientific theories and engineering technologies invented during that period as the one arriving in 50 years ago from a century ago? Geman D. & Geman S. [1] answered no with asserting that, as contrasted with the the former 50-years when groundbreaking discoveries and inventions proliferated all over the domains, the advances of the past 50-years were mostly incremental, and largely focused on newer and faster ways to gather and store information, communicate, or be entertained.

One of the major causes the authors remark about is the fact that we are too much “being online”, where intense and sustained concentration/thinking are inhibited by the perpetually distracting messaging and massive communication via Internet.

Perhaps “thinking out of the box” has become rare because the Internet is itself a box.

 

Putting Grigori Perelman’s proof of the Poincare conjecture and Yitang Zhang’s contributions to the twin-prime conjecture as an extreme example of accomplishment attributed to their instinct for solitude, I totally agree on the necessity of being disconnected/unplugged for one’s own benefit, let alone science. We might have to rest on another new technology that enables to spare such time without conscious effort.

[1] Donald Geman and Stuart Geman
Opinion: Science in the age of selfies
PNAS 2016 113 (34) 9384-9387; doi:10.1073/pnas.1609793113