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Micheal Savage

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a public database of research and information

The internet is a great start towards this goal. I believe that if someone has a topic they wish to learn about they should have the means regardless of background and money restrictions to do so. The internet is great but misinformation is difficult to sort through. this can stimulate greater learning and ideas for a brighter future. Its not enough to try and fund schools colleges for learning to the wealthy and those in positions that have access to schools with sufficient resources. This will boost technological development exponentially ensuring a brighter future for all of mankind.

Topics: adult learning collaborative learning education mankind world advancements
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    Micheal Savage

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    Sep 11 2011: Another Point I wanna make for this idea is that one persons idea can transform or inspire an idea in someone else to make, design, or invent something that is needed. I also think that technology itself should be open source. This way when needs arise anywhere they can be meet within weeks. Especially if the whole world took half an our out of there day to ponder a solution. Think about it.

  • Adam Balmer

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    Sep 11 2011: Yes, I think that a free access journal or something of that nature would enable the general public to get involved in debate and progress within particular fields. I think that it would make things even better if the general public were also allowed to contribute to that database of information.

    There are some fields that I think do not require any sort of formal education to get involved in, such as philosophy, english literature and theoretical science. So why not make these completely free for the public to access and contribute to? Surely by chance some of those people will have a lot to contribute.
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    Walter Radtke

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    Sep 11 2011: The Internet is the educational institution of the future. We need to increase our mental capacity to quickly sort through data to find what we need. Wikipedia could be improved if it allowed alternative views in its entries. People who disagree with an entry should be allowed to post their alternative and have it available to anyone.
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      Micheal Savage

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      Sep 11 2011: I would have to agree. Based on the talk about unintended consequences its an important part of the decision making process. If people can look at all the pro's and cons of a research we can improve the pro's and reduce the cons before the project reaches completion no matter what the subject matter is. In fact it is a process that NASA and other scientific organizations use today. If we imagine 1000 ways something can fail we can make a project 1000 times more successful. If we think up 1,000,000 more ways for something to fail its success rate is 1 million times more successful, and so on.

  • Aaron Padwa

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    Sep 10 2011: Absolutely. This is a great idea. It would help eliminate the current need for translation between the scientific community and the general public. Complex scientific ideas and even less complex ones often get misinterpreted and misrepresented to the general public. The public's lack of access to scientific resources prevents them from being able to understand the true nature of most scientific discoveries. Science is not nearly as black and white as it is presented. By black and white I mean that many scientific discoveries are represented as evidence of certainties rather than evidence of possibilities. This is a very important distinction that would be more obvious if people could read (and understand) the scientific papers behind the conclusions that are presented to the public. There are many social issues that need to be addressed in addition to providing such a scientific database, such as improving access to the internet for people of low socioeconomic status (which would probably require some sort of economic investment) and improving the general population's ability to understand science through educational reform.

    Also check out my response to your comment in the similarities between religion thread. I am curious about your thoughts.
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