This section should cover both scientific concepts about P2P (network theory and such), but also the use of P2P practices within the field of science.

Ported so far are three first columns of the Encyclopedia and the Resources section.

Introduction

Can Open Source Licences be used in Science?

Citations

On the relativity of the role of experts

We will always have experts in various fields, but to limit contributions to knowledge as a whole to experts only is to deprive all of humanity of its enormous potential for distributed intelligence.

- M. Guedon [1]

On the need for distributed intelligence to tackle global problems

"(have) we now hit a point where scientific problems are so complex that one person alone can’t solve them? It would certainly seem that way. The problems science is pursuing today—issues like global warming and genomic mapping—demand a distributed approach across disciplines. But currently, journal articles, data, research, materials and so on are stopped by contracts and copyrights at such a rate that it’s become nearly impossible to pull them together."

- John Wilbanks [2]

On the benefits of open sharing in science

"The most rapid advances in science come with open sharing of information, and collaboration. That is how the world's scientists accomplished the mapping of the human genome in a matter of years. If traditional publishing practices had been followed instead of open sharing, it seems likely that mapping the human genome would have taken decades, if not centuries."

- Heather Morrison [3]

How open source biology and horizontal gene transfer will replace Darwinian speciation and evolution

"[We can speculate about] a golden age... when horizontal gene transfer was universal and separate species did not yet exist. Life was then a community of cells of various kinds, sharing their genetic information... Evolution could be rapid... But then, one evil day, a cell resembling a primitive bacterium happened to find itself one jump ahead of its neighbors in efficiency. That cell, anticipating Bill Gates by three billion years, separated itself from the community and refused to share... [But] now, as Homo sapiens domesticates the new biotechnology, we are reviving the ancient... practice of horizontal gene transfer, moving genes easily from microbes to plants and animals, blurring the boundaries between species. We are moving rapidly into the post-Darwinian era, when... the rules of Open Source sharing will be extended from the exchange of software to the exchange of genes. Then the evolution of life will once again be communal, as it was in the good old days before separate species and intellectual property were invented." (http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/30/1927205)

Source: New York Review of Books, The Future of Biotech. Freeman Dyson. URL = http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20370

Key Resources

The Living Knowledge conferences focus on participatory science modes of research.