At Home Science The Future?

I want to preface this thread with a short history of computer software.

In the beginning computer software was cooked up by enthusiasts at home. They would create games, office software and other applications in their bedrooms. Later on this became impossible as the graphics and software became far to complex for a couple of people, the last great homemade game being Worms.

Science has been the same. We started with people doing small experiments, from Archimedes in his bathtub to Edison and his light bulb, to the LHC and the human genome project.

This is all changing as you can see from this article.

news.yahoo.com...;_ylt=AizdzZ8IboSWpqhDNHN6GasDW7oF

So is the future of science the home enthusiast? Or will the government stop us, suppress our findings because they consider the home user dangerous? Afterall home chemistry has been obliterated due to the terrorism laws and i speak as someone who sold all his glassware several years ago and safely disposed of all the chemicals i possessed. I was just so scared of being accused of being a terrorist!

Will the curious minds suceed where big drug companies have failed? Will novel biological concepts be discovered in a garage or a high tech lab? Will the governments stop this before it gets out of hand or will we see a whole generation of at home genoists (i made that word up).

So what do you all think, is the future of biology and genetics in the hands of someone in their garage tinkering with cells, or is it only with big business?

[edit on 26-12-2008 by ImaginaryReality1984]

lol, i've just been playing Wesnoth for the last 4hours i can tell you that FLOSS is alive and well, you might be forgetting a little thing called gnu-linux from your study! FYI Termulous, Wesnoth and many other great games have been created recently by home enthusiasts. You might like to find out what goes on at the 'source forge' website before using the demise of home made software in your predictions.

As for home mechanics the issue is very much with patented components, could we defeat 'copyright' laws then we would be in a position where people would be able to go back to producing good, well made useful items at home and with the increase in home hobbyist skill levels and support infrastructure we would naturally see a move back towards more demanding hobbies and thus new innovation would come from the hobby sector.

Don't forget that home enthusiasts have invented many of the great things we now by from massive companys; the wind up radio was created by Trevor Baylis in his shed, The first computer was designed by Turing on his coffee table at hime long before GCHQ offered him the money to build it and of course the theory of general relativity was created while young albert worked as copy clerk in the patent office.

Yeah the government isn't going to let us make high grade explosives for a while but thats not going to stop the tireless march of progress, just take a look at the REPRAP if you still don't believe me -it's a open source rapid prototyper designed to be able to reproduce itself, the plan being that people make a machine and use it to give their friends copies, over time people will work out improvements and invent new attachments for it and then these new parts can be added to the design and shared with friends.

Originally posted by NatureBoy
lol, i've just been playing Wesnoth for the last 4hours i can tell you that FLOSS is alive and well, you might be forgetting a little thing called gnu-linux from your study! FYI Termulous, Wesnoth and many other great games have been created recently by home enthusiasts. You might like to find out what goes on at the 'source forge' website before using the demise of home made software in your predictions.

I am fully aware of all of this and i think software is undergoing another homemade revolution including the iPhones recent user generated software. So please don't ridicule my opinion as i'm as aware of the tech field as you are. This thread however was merely using that as an example.

Let me make this very clear, the computer thing was an example, this thread is not about computers it is about biological science being the new at home thing. Genetics also being the new at home thing. So lets drop the computer stuff please as i only used it as a mirror of current biological science.

The thread was also about how governments seen to revel in stopping research being in the hands of citizens. Denouncing anyone with a lab as a terrorist.

[edit on 26-12-2008 by ImaginaryReality1984]

Franklin and his light bulb? Have I jumped time lines?

Originally posted by kettlebellysmith
Franklin and his light bulb? Have I jumped time lines?

Lol thanks for pointing that out, i typed the wrong name by mistake. Although in essence edison didn't invent the first lightbulb. Lol anyway sorry i typed the wrong name there.

hehe ok i'll not mention again that i only use software which is open source anf that the community is lively and vibrant if you want to use, as an example only, that home brew software is dead. i'm not sure i understand the logic of this but meh whatever.

how about the Pande Groups projects at Berkley? Folding at Home is a program which used a distributed network of home PC's to simulate folding proteans, they've released over fifty peer reviewed papers already and greatly progressed the worlds understanding of protean dynamics.

If more people were willing to share processor power with projects like this and others and work as part of someform of CVS style system or collectives over the internet, everyone agreeing to share freely their work and get help from others when needed then we would see a great increase in cool things being made by people and big inventions being made.

Originally posted by NatureBoy
hehe ok i'll not mention again that i only use software which is open source anf that the community is lively and vibrant if you want to use, as an example only, that home brew software is dead. i'm not sure i understand the logic of this but meh whatever.

Ick, you missed my point. I never said homebrew software was dead, i was using it as an example how science is going through the same period of individual rebirth. Where individuals can contribute as much as mega corporations. Please read again what i have said if you don't understand it.

Again with your talk of the folding protein research you have missed the point. IO am talking about people with homemade labs, doing unique research into things that interest them. You are still talking about centralised projects in regards to the protein research as it still boils down to an institution.

[edit on 26-12-2008 by ImaginaryReality1984]

reply to post by ImaginaryReality1984


ok, ok, i get it you just wanted to start your thread with a 'short history of computer software' but it doesn't matter if none of it's true because it's only an example, great, well done with that.

Ok, so here it is - when a group of people work together they become a collective, an institution or a company - If Pande's work at Berkley because its done with the help of a university doesn't fit you glove and we aren't aloud to talke about Stallman or any of that sort of stuff, oh and we're ignoring the reprap because it isn't biology....

The future of user developed tech is less likely in the biological field because of the huge dangers involved in the work, i for one don't want some random dude down my road playing arround with anthrax spores and cow livers in case a windy day wipes out half the village! Also that said i think the decline in homebrew biological science happened shortly after the Curie family accident - people realized that mucking around with things you don't understand can be really rather bad for you

Then consider that the natural sciences have been almost exclusively home done sciences for thousands of years, it wasn't until the need for large sample double-bind studies was realized that large groups and institutions took over. One lone nut simply can't create science at the point its progressed too at the moment, as i suggested though if projects like Folding@Home were to become more popular and CVS style collectives were to become more common then the home enthusiast would once again have a great advantage over the corporate money hunter.

sadly, I really don't think though that while the majority of the population is unable to assess the rationality of fairly simple studys and detect the serious flaws in research and evaluation procedure in some of the more common medical scams such as the Dore 'cure' for dyslexia, the 'link' between MMR and autism, the 'link' between Cannabis and mental llness or any of the other terribly unscientific 'studies' and 'conclusions' which are routinely drawn by the press and populace we're not going to see anything meaningful produced anytime soon.

to be honest i don't really know what you're expecting to happen, some lone guy in his basement to decode the gnome on his own? some potion mixer to invent a magic bullet to cure all cancers? the mapping of protein interaction in a developing stem cell to come out of someones attic while his wife nags him to come down for dinner? of course plenty of people do sit in their basements, attics and sheds working on this although as they're using the internet and are part of some form of collective i suppose we can't talk about them, rite? because it won't be reported as 'Mr Vijay Pande today discovered that the Villa Headpeice protein is small' but rather 'Berkeley Computer science depart and Pande Group released a paper in nature this morning....'

i think that really what you're doing is separating anyone thats trying to do science, people who have done degrees and PHDs on the subject they chose and involve themselves with groups and projects doing the things that interest them, you're calling all these people 'scientists' and then asking why the other people aren't making high science.

If i was to come up with the idea for some science, toil away in my shed for a week then come up with something good which i go and show people to try and raise some money to continue the project - then i'm a home brew scientist right? and if my mate from round the corner pops over and helps then we're both home brew right? Yet if loads of people i know through friends of friends, internets and the like meet up to make a large hadron collider then we're not homebrew anymore we're now some form of 'corporate scientists' or something are we?