Well, it’s really a question of what we consider to be a”robot”. It used to be, for example, an automatic welding machine on an assembly line somewhere in Japan. Nowadays it may be a “nano-bot”. They both can be called robots, but they may be manifestations of different technologies and thus of different “sciences” behind them. But who cares about that welding robot now. Or for example telecommunication. It was “telecommunication” 60 years ago and it is still called the same now, but in fact we were/are excited about different things. Then it was satellite communication or microwave range communication, but today it’s all fibre that thrills people. Again, different “sciences”. But of course it’s all relative and sometimes it’s difficult to distinguish where one revolution becomes an evolution and another one begins.
As a big space enthusiast I’m very excited about all these modern developments. Cube sats, suborbital flights, alternative launch techniques , it’s all very interesting. By the way, it’s just popped up in my reader: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cN-odv0Ea5Q&feature=youtube_gdata . Or another example is the development of the UK space industry. With just several hundred people involved (or a few thousand at most) the industry managed to capture about 6% of the global space market. Lots of interesting things going on at the moment.
“Именно про широкую публику, печатаются ли, читаются ли и обсуждаются ли научные новости?”- The short answer is yes. Yes, they read, they publish, they broadcast, they discuss, they are interested. But neither you nor me can be objective in our judgement of PI. Science is your job and technology is mine. One way or another our professional interests shape our opinions.
How do we define “public” and how we are going to measure people’s interest in science, objectively that is? For example number of students is growing. Can it be a manifestation of the growing public interest in science and technology? Statistics shows (http://www.hesa.ac.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1897&Itemid=239) that total number of students studding science increased from 983865 in 2008/09 to 1032245 in 2009/2010. Is it good or not very?
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Date: 2011-07-05 10:58 am (UTC)As a big space enthusiast I’m very excited about all these modern developments. Cube sats, suborbital flights, alternative launch techniques , it’s all very interesting. By the way, it’s just popped up in my reader: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cN-odv0Ea5Q&feature=youtube_gdata .
Or another example is the development of the UK space industry. With just several hundred people involved (or a few thousand at most) the industry managed to capture about 6% of the global space market. Lots of interesting things going on at the moment.
“Именно про широкую публику, печатаются ли, читаются ли и обсуждаются ли научные новости?”-
The short answer is yes. Yes, they read, they publish, they broadcast, they discuss, they are interested. But neither you nor me can be objective in our judgement of PI. Science is your job and technology is mine. One way or another our professional interests shape our opinions.
How do we define “public” and how we are going to measure people’s interest in science, objectively that is? For example number of students is growing. Can it be a manifestation of the growing public interest in science and technology? Statistics shows (http://www.hesa.ac.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1897&Itemid=239) that total number of students studding science increased from 983865 in 2008/09 to 1032245 in 2009/2010. Is it good or not very?