Mercredi 18 Janvier 2023 à 11h00, Martin EZTRODT (AKASHA Foundation, Zug, Switzerland & Co-Founder of Blockchain for Science GmbH, Berlin, Germany) donnera un séminaire intitulé "A new home for science : Open data frameworks for collaborative research & the distributed web".
Abstract
When the Web was first conceived it was intended to make information management easier and prevent information loss [1]. It should be our number one scientific tool to work on complex problems collaboratively. Unfortunately, to this day, most academia remains riddled by a winner-takes-all environment for high-impact publications or patents, often hindering cooperation. The result is redundancies, poorly structured, and small-scale research efforts lacking reproducibility. Moreover, among many researchers, there’s little attention on how we may update the processes and disseminate information effectively - to the great delight of commercial publishers [2].
In fact, “the information superhighway” looks now more like a shopping mall [3] than a global collaborative network to solve scientific puzzles effectively. But there are exceptions. The collaborative communities of the ‘90s used the internet for sharing code while “keeping state” by introducing a tool called Git. It paved the way for the ”success of open source,” exemplified by the development of Linux / Apache [4]. Can we scale open source on the Web beyond software development ?
In my presentation, I will highlight current shortcomings and share risks to free and open knowledge creation as publishers transition to new business models by creating closed-source “research platforms”. Finally, I will present an alternative way to organize research on the Web through concepts of the platform-cooperative. By building on the principles of a distributed and blockchain-enabled Web, new tools for data attribution, the operator or machine that generated them, time-stamping, and ultimately, financial incentives could emerge while reducing the power of intermediaries.
[1] Tim Berners Lee | https://www.w3.org/History/1989/proposal.html
[2] Martin Etzrodt | https://elephantinthelab.org/decentralizing-science/
[3] Internet for the People The Fight for Our Digital Future | Ben Tarnoff, Verso Books, 2022
[4] The success of open source |Steven Weber, Harvard University Press, 2004
