Technology development is going through a revolution over the last decade or two. The process of teams creating things that have a high degree of precision and detail has been found to overwhelmingly social in nature. That is, while technical skills are irreplaceable, it's the social aspects of developing new things that are much more critical to success than the technical aspects.
Many technologists do not get this. To them, anything important must by definition involve some kind of new tech. They fail to see that even in breakout technology development, the social way we construct teams and interact with each other (and our market) is critical.
Turns out humans are social animals. And this nature has impacts on all kinds of things, even things that are completely analytic.
Science has yet to make this leap. We're still at the stage where the details of the science are published and gushed over. We focus on the science itself instead of the much more interesting and powerful thing: the social structure of how we are conducting our scientific research.
There is a slight bit of light on the horizon. People from technical backgrounds are taking a hard look at how we organize our information and work. There are calls for more open science, there are calls to rethink our how we make funding decisions. There are calls for scientists to stop trying to be priests of knowledge -- arbiters of all that is true -- and work more as servants. These are all taken from mistakes the tech community has made and suffered from (and still suffers, in many cases). Let's hope this trend continues.
Given the tech community's tendency towards populism over genuine technical merit, I don't think it is a good model for discovering truth about the world. The tech community is still busy reinventing the 70's poorly, let alone making any real progress.
Social is only important in so far is it facilitates communication and progress towards technical understanding.
Many technologists do not get this. To them, anything important must by definition involve some kind of new tech. They fail to see that even in breakout technology development, the social way we construct teams and interact with each other (and our market) is critical.
Turns out humans are social animals. And this nature has impacts on all kinds of things, even things that are completely analytic.
Science has yet to make this leap. We're still at the stage where the details of the science are published and gushed over. We focus on the science itself instead of the much more interesting and powerful thing: the social structure of how we are conducting our scientific research.
There is a slight bit of light on the horizon. People from technical backgrounds are taking a hard look at how we organize our information and work. There are calls for more open science, there are calls to rethink our how we make funding decisions. There are calls for scientists to stop trying to be priests of knowledge -- arbiters of all that is true -- and work more as servants. These are all taken from mistakes the tech community has made and suffered from (and still suffers, in many cases). Let's hope this trend continues.