Every day, when I go dock fishing, I stare at The Cliff. I feel that all the small lakes are defined by their shoreline cliffs. Without cliffs, they are merely puddles! The cliff consists of billion year old gneiss, which has been smoothed by the glaciers. Bloodied by unbowed! Faults define the cliffs, and make for a deep lake.
A cliff can be an allegory for many things. Right now I face the cliff of the 'Research Domain' or the pay wall. Much of the geology and geophysics that I was involved in, over the last 30 years, is in journals and books. And I can't get access to them, to put out in the public domain. There are three domains that have dogged me throughout my career:
-The Private Domain - consisting of consulting reports and surveys that just end up before panels of old guys, for various approvals. You can imagine the quality of this stuff!
-The Scientific Domain - consisting of reviewed papers, journals and books. Only accessible by the Elite Cartel, but better than Private.
-The Public Domain - characterized by Wikipedia, and using sources that are on the web. I've done a lot of work for this, but it is severely limited by the sources you can get.
In between fishing, I shall try to get concepts and papers (with which I have been involved) into the public domain. It may mean 'cartooning' the figures, and extensive translation, but it should be worth it.
No comments:
Post a Comment