That’s what I heard (literally) from several people at the Joint Mathematics Meeting I went to in San Antonio, Texas, in January. And I agree!
It is cool to be affiliated with a site that is well-received by the public. One of the coolest things at the meeting was the fact that when people “tested” PM’s coverage (to see if we had entries on some specialized topic coming from their research), at least one hit always turned up. I don’t know if we were just being lucky, or if PM’s basic coverage (for research material) is actually getting to be reasonably complete. Anyway, I was proud of the authors who made it possible to pull of those mini-demos successfully.
After the conference, I started to write up a “whitepaper”, detailing what we’re doing with the site and where we’re going with it; our initial discussions of this document are quickly turning into a draft. You’re invited to take a look and contribute:
http://planetx.cc.vt.edu/AsteroidMeta/PlanetMath_whitepaper_for_potential_partners
One of the important things that has come up there is PM as a resource for “developing scholars” – otherwise known as young mathematicians – and in which category I would also like to include the young at heart. (After all, anyone who is truly a scholar is always developing in some way.) PM certainly has a healthy share of visionaries at many stages, ages, and situations in life, and I commend all of you! (Hey, I’ll even commend myself on that!)
Still, I think that PM may have a special place in “youth culture” – it would be interesting to get people’s views on that. My own feeling is that PM is a little tiny bit like the rock’n’roll/zine/Burning Man <ducks>/etc. of the math universe. Not that we’re in any way terminally cool; but we do have at least a bit of “geek chic”.
Going along with the above examples it would probably be worthwhile to include (potentially even better) examples things like the Whole Earth Catalog, food co-ops, Wikipedia, free software – all of which has at one point or another been considered to be somewhat “counter-culture”, but which has not been too counter-culture to be adapted for mainstream use.
If the general feeling here is one of agreement (I’d be interested to know if it isn’t too!), then I think we should run with this.
Just for example – because this is part of what inspired this posting – we could get the next PM poster to look something like a concert poster. There is almost nothing like this up on the walls at math conferences or math departments; but at least among the people I know, this sort of stuff is almost ubiquitously popular. (Yes, this is totally a matter of “image” I am talking about, sorry if I sound sleezy; at least I am trying to be accurate – in that I think the specific image I am talking about cultivating is, in this case, entirely appropriate.)
That said, I met a couple of guys from UMN at the conference (i.e. the University of Minnesota, which starts two blocks from my apartment) who looked very clean cut (they were there for job interviews) and who were quite ready to joke with me about my longish and rather wild hair. (Luckily I am comfortable enough with the counter-culturey image I cultivate to be able to withstand light-hearted teasing! I could have just as easily remarked that they looked like they were coming out of a “Leave it to Beaver” episode; but why bother.) Point being, I don’t think we need to be “exclusive” in our counter-culture image. Anyway, insofar as PM really is counter-culture, it isn’t so much about image.
I’ll close by rounding out that point. When I was a kid, I enjoyed math, and was relatively good at math, but even more than that I enjoyed learning in general and I enjoyed bucking the system. Which meant that if I could e.g. learn enough math on my own to skip a whole year of math classes, or if I could get into a special program, or if I could take classes at the university instead of at high school while I was still in high school – I was all over it! Admittedly, I was (in some ways) a rather precocious youngster. But my experience e.g. with my friends is that I was far from being the only one. This sort of feeling can not really be called “counter-culture” in a broad sense – but that specific sense, of getting the most out of the system that it will support – is, I think, modestly counter-culture. Specifically, it is about bending the system to suit yourself, rather than the other way around. In my case, this felt like a matter of personal enjoyment much more than a matter of image (presumably most people thought I was an irredeemable geek, and of course if they thought this, they were probably mostly right).
I think – and I expect this will be reflected heavily in the whitepaper I mentioned – that PM is really well-suited to (and, I hope, will hopefully become increasingly well-suited to) the learn-at-your-own-pace culture and ideology that best supports the self-directed student.
I’d be interested to get your thoughts on these matters! -jcorneli (Originally posted to the Math Pub forum on 15 February 2006: http://planetmath.org/?op=getmsg&id=9591)
When re-rereading this post after having read “[http://www.invisibleadjunct.com The Invisible Adjunct]”, it occurred to me that there is another sense in which PlanetMath could serve very as a focus for a youth counter-culture. I am thinking of the lost generation of young scholars who has seen the traditional system disappear in front of their eyes and are left to fend alone as alienated vagabonds in a gray shadow land of academic nomadism.
As an element of this set, my personal experiences can serve as a first-hand introduction to this phenomenon. When I was an undergraduate, the old order was largely intact. Whatever its shortcomings, at least it was functional. As a student, I felt reasonably assured that, as long as I put a reasonable effort and produced decent work, I could be assured of steady progress along the cursus honorum from lowly freshman to distinguished tenured professor. While I might not wind up quite the institution I wanted and would have to put up with some unfair share of dues-paying and similar petty idiocy, at the same time I could expect a career similar in its genral outlines to those of my mentors. By and large, around me, I saw the system working — graduates were becoming post-doctoral fellows and, after a few years, being promoted to assistant professorships; junior faculty were regularly obtaining tenure. By no means am I inclined to indulge in wishful nostalgia here — the system certainly had it share of elitism and abusiveness, but it allowed the average participant to pursue a career path conducive to his scholarly interests.
In the later part of my term as graduate student, I saw this order begining to unravel. Just as I was accepted as a student by my advisor, the government decided not to give student support. At first, all of us involved — my advisor, the dean, and I — thought that this was a temporary glitch and devised a workaround involving a temporary university scholarship, but it eventually became apparrent that this was a more serious issue. In fact, the next student who was interested in studying general relativity theory had to be turned away despite his being sufficiently qualified. As my advisor said to me and his previous advisee “You’re the last of the Mohicans”.
At the same time, something rather unusual happened — graduate students formed a union and went on strike. They had too much of being burdened with an excessive (for students) teaching load. This took people by surprise. The physics department chairman called a meeting with the graduate students so that he and equally puzzled physics students could figure out what was going on. At the time, I was representing the Physics Department on the Graduate and Professional Senate and remember how we tried to mediate some of the discussion and debate on this topic.
Likewise, applications fared poorly. I remember how one student mailed out 100 applications only to have all of them rejected! A good number of students decided not to pursue academic careers and instead found jobs in various technical fields. On my second round of applications, I succeeded in obtaining a post-doctoral appointment at the Center for Gravitational Physics and Geometry. However, here too I saw more of the same — students and post-doctoral scholars were having a hard time applying, often times coming up with only rejections. As one student put it (quoting, likely paraphrasing as best as I remember), “What do they expect us to do? Spend a few years here, then disappear off the face of the Earth?” When one starts hearing things like this and seeing applicants getting no response to 100 letters at world-renowned universities and research institutes, that suggests that something is not quite right with the picture!
After that I moved South and was professor in Misssissippi and Memphis. Unfortunately, given the trends of the times, both of these were “visiting professor” appointments, not tenure-track appointments. Also, one of the important lessons I learned from this experience in Dixie was just how great a chasm separates rich institutions from poor institutions. Recently, we spoke of outreach to third-world countries. At the same time, it is worth pointing out that we have third-world conditions even in the world’s top nation. While I was in Memphis, the paucity of the library’s science collection was appalling. Were it not for a combination of my 600-odd volume personal math library, my alumni library priveleges, Ginsparg’s ArXiv, and interlibrary loan, I could easily have been cut off rather effectively from meaningful participation in the world of active research and the mathematical community at large.
Perhaps I have gone on at too great length here about my own personal experience, but I think it is relevant as an example of the phenomenon of which I have first-hand experience. Looking around, I have read that many others have had similar experiences and that the problems which I first noticed towareds the end of my graduate studies have only worsened in the intervening decade. Graduate student unionization has beome a fact of life all throughout academia. While not so long ago, a faculty appointment would usually last at least five years, nowadays one-year appointments (which were unheard of under ordinary circumstances) have become commonplace. Terms like “visiting professor” and “adjunct professor” have been twisted into completely new meanings to describe these appointments. Faculty have become split into a tenure-track and temporary group. A large contingent of people who otherwise would have chosen academic careers are deciding to pursue non-academic occupations. For more details, see the references. Looking at them, one sees that there has arisen a subculture of young scholars as a response to this situation.
It seems rather clear to me that this is a relevant issue to Planet Math because so much of our membership belongs to this lost generation. While it would be nice to have some concrete data in the form of something like a user survey, looking generally at the nature of the postings to the site and specifically at the top contributors, who have disclosed a fair amount of information about themselves, I feel confident in asserting that a good-sized contingent, if not a sizable majority, of the members of our community are graduate students and recent graduates. Therefore, it would be short-sighted to plan anything with respect to Planet Math witout taking into consideration the peculiar circumstances which attend on this particular group.
One can view this state of affairs as a catastrophe or an opportunity depending on whether one casts one glance backwards or forwards. Naturally, if one is primarily concerned with the traditions of academia, this is an unqualified disaster. However, if one is interested in exploring alternatives, such a crisis may be the decisive moment in which to act and implement a new paradigm.
Being an optimist, I incline towards the latter view, regarding this situation as the occasion for a creative solution. During my period of heavy involvement with meovements for social change I heard much talk of the distinction between revolution and reform. I believe that this is an occasion where we have something positive to offer to both ends of the dichotomy without hindering the efforts of the other end.
To reform-minded individuals who wish to operate within the existing system, we can offer a credible replacement for some of what has been lost. In the trend towards musical chairs for young faculty and the divide between research and teaching faculty, one loss has been the opportunity for many people to develop some sort of relationship with colleagues that centres around discussing research issues. Gone are the tea-time discussions and the colloquia when one is expected to simply teach one’s section and move on to the next job. This loss can be especially apparent for those who teach online or have left academia altogether.
There can be quite a culture shock for recent graduates. While they were graduate students, their main focus was on research, at least in connection with their thesis. But when they encountered the real world either upon graduation or after a brief post-doctoral appointment, they encountered a pronounced shift in priorities. Research went from being the prime concern to an irrelevancy. While some people may welcome this — for them thesis research was solely a means whereby to attain a diploma needed to advance their careers — not everyone has such a nihilistic attitude. Even if one might not be interested in making mathematical research the main focus of one’s life, one might at least have acquired enough of a fondness for the research one participated in that one might want to keep up on developments in the field if not continue one’s research part-time after graduation. While Weierstrass might have done it, carrying on a research programme without the benefit of interaction with and support of colleagues is draining and, unless one has the determination and the fortitude of Weierstrass, one is not likely to be able to keep it up for very long. Just as the reference end of Planet Math could help independant researchers access the information they need, so too hopefully the social end can help them stay connected to a larger mathematical community with some sort of stability as opposed to the quickly-shifting or isolating circumstances which they find themselves in.
This aspect could help give people who have had to accept teaching positions, especially at poorer institutions have a fairer chance of keeping up with their more fortunate colleagues. One of the worst problems of getting out of the loop is that, the longer one is out of the loop, the harder it is to get back in. To stay competitive and hope to land a research position in the future, one needs to keep up some sort of research. Hopefully, if an online mathematical community can provide some of the social support which one might otherwise have found in one’s department, this will allow more people in such situations to maintain some sort of research programme and, concommittantly, hope of moving into more desirable circumstances.
For those with more revolutionary aims, Planet Math and the Hyperreal Dictionary of Mathematics may offer a different set of circumstances for the pursuit of mathematical knowledge than those usually found in universities. I find this possibility especially attractive for individuals like myself who, in the terminology of [http://www.crosscurrents.org/miles.htm John Miles’ essay] are more intellellectuals rather than academics. While I can be (and frequently and) an academic and find the discipline of the academic style useful mental exercise and an important check against the dangers of naive unchecked generalism as well as an important support for speculative flights of intellectual fancy, at the same time, I would not see myself as living up to my full potential were I to confine myself exclusively to the academic modus operandi. Since universities are not well suited to intellectuals, I long for a milleux which supports mathematical intellectuals. While I carry out my academic investigations on Mittag-Leffler functions and fractional calculus successfully in a university environment, it would also be nice to have a different sort of cultural framework within which to pursue my intellectual ruminations on metamathetics(which easily extend to all sorts of subjects) and explore possible alternatives to the usual mathematical paradigms. –rspuzio
- http://www.idiocentrism.com/squib.afford.htm
- http://www.adjunctnation.com/other/blog/
- http://www.invisibleadjunct.com
- http://concerns.youngmath.net/
It seems like we need more “support structures” for essentially adrift scholars (I use this term instead of “intellectuals”, because “scholarship” seems to be the salient part of the academy, and it also implies intellectual activity). We should view !PlanetMath’s mission and role as containing a major element of supporting this kind of person. This kind of role should be expected anyway from a site and community which relies on self-driven scholarship, but now I am seeing that the prevalence of such activity is also driven by changes in the academy and research world.
Perhaps we should create a “guide for independent scholars”, which would act as kind of a “HOWTO” helping to explain how to live a scholarly and intellectually connected life when one cannot rely on universities, employers, the government, and other sorts of institutions and benefactors to support one’s own scholarly pursuits. Of course, this HOWTO would suggest using internet-based tools to support these activities and establish virtual communities, but it could also contain strategies for the non-intellectual problems: being able to live while independently pursuing scholarship, and attaining some balance. Also, how to interact with the “establishment” system (which is very useful if not necessary) could use some explication.
We all have a lot of experience with this. It would be interesting to bring together others living this kind of life to learn more and “organize”.
Such a document might also help to convince people who are “stuck” in the system to leave it, or at least become agents of reform.
–akrowne Sun Feb 19 19:50:40 UTC 2006
One of my motivations for working on logic and math software is to remedy certain shortcomings in our culture. I hope that people will learn logic so that when they hear a politician say something misleading and illogical, like “We fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here!” they shudder in horror at the fallacious reasoning.
I am not a big fan of the term “counter-culture”. It seems like a false distinction, like liberal versus conservative. And I think it confuses the issues at hand. Too many connotations, especially with the 60’s.
Logic and mathematics are tools for those who want to reason effectively. But other tools are also needed for those who want to live effectively. And I think that some of us need to take our old ideas and nostalgia for simpler, slower times with job security, 9 to 5 jobs, houses in the burbs, and two cars in the garage and go visit Reality. Lifelong scholarship and training are more than niceties or hobbies, they are matters of survival in 21st century America. –ocat
Here is a quick HOWTO, for starters.
- Do not think dishonestly.
- The Way is in training.
- Become acquainted with every art.
- Know the Ways of professions.
- Distinguish between gain and loss in worldly matters.
- Develop intuitive judgement and understanding for everything.
- Perceive those things which cannot be seen.
- Pay attention even to trifles.
- Do nothing which is of no use.
– “Go Rin No Sho”, Miyamoto Musashi
The quote reminds me of the ”the way of the asteroid|Way of the Asteroid”.
As for “counter-culture“‘s connotation of beatniks, hippies, punks, ravers and kindred spirits, anyone who has met me will know that this appeals to me. At the same time, I agree that not everyone sees this connotation as positive, so one needs to be careful where one uses such terms — talking about counter-culture and anarchy may not be the best way to to intrest the AMS in PM, but it might be a good way to get cyberpunks’ participation in HDM.
In fact, the only reservation I have with the terms “counter-culture” and “alternative culture” is that they are negative — they define a movement in terms of what it is opposed to rather than by what it promotes. Overuse of such terminology can be dangerous. It can promote reactive rather than proactive thinking. One can put oneself in the curious situation of the anti-war protester who found that success in stopping the war led to an identity crisis. That is why I think it is good to balance this language with talk of free math.
The guide for independant scholars would be a good idea but, at the same time, I am afraid it might be too short a document if written today. We might need to first create some more opportunities for the independant mathematician in order to have more to write about.
Just as I consider my case as a good typical example of how an academic career can be affected for the worse by recent changes, I would also not consider is as a not-so-good atypical example of mathematical research outside (or only loosely affiliated with) academia becasue I am unusually independant, autodidactic and intellectually self-sufficient. Returning to my personal history, my experience as a graduate student was already different from the norm. While for most people, advising a graduate student is a process of holding someone’s hand and slowly walking them through increasingly complex problems step-by-step as they slowly gain ability and confidence to carry out independant research, I was, in the words of my advisor, “a self-starter”. While taking his course, I solved a problem he suggested. (I got a lot of mileage out of that solution — not only did I submit the write-up for credit to two classes, it was also my debut publication.) Afterwards, I was choosing research topics pretty much on my own and his advice was more in the way of general information about the field, how to manage a research programme and balance interests, useful mathematical techniques, introduction to various colleagues and the like rather than specific guidance on a particular project.
For someone of my temprament, the proverbial desert island can be as good a setting as a university for mathematical research. However, not everyone has the same sort of personality — other people are more interdependant and want a more suporting collaborative environment in order to live up to their potential. Unfortunately, I don’t think we yet have such a situation online so we might need to do a bit more work before most people will find an alternative research situation congenial.
As I see it, there are three basic reqiuirements for a successful research envoironment:
- Time to carry out the research.
- Access to mathematical knowledge.
- Colleagues with whom to discuss ideas and collaborate.
In the traditional setting, the first need is provided by paying faculty to carry out research. In the new order, mathematicians have done somewhat better thatn their humanist colleagues in the job market — there are enough applications of mathematics to applied problems that mathematicians can typically find some line of work which utilizes their skills. Of course, typically such work will involve the application of existing math as opposed to extending the frontiers of the subject, but at least it keeps one’s mathematical skills from getting rusty and helps justify the expenditure of effort one put into studying the subject.
The problem with such a situation, of course, is that it typically only leaves one spare time in which to pursue mathematical research. However, this may not be all that different from the situation of the typical professor. As anyone who has held such a position knows all too well, a significant portion of one’s time and energy goes into such tasks as preparing lectures, faculty meetings, writing and reading recommendations, office hours, advising, administrative paperwork, various committees, organizing lectures and conferences, grant applications, departmental events, open-houses, and what not, so research typically is at best a part-time activity. With the recent increase in administration, there is even less time for research. It is really sad when a department produces more pages of self-study for the administration than research publications for the scientific community. I know professors who do the bulk of their reseach activity during the summer vacation. So, in this regard, one may be just as well off inside or outside academia.
As for the second point, that is the issue which our free math movement adresses. As much has been written on that topic elsewhere, there is no point in restating it here. Suffice it to say that although much remains to be done before we have universal access to all mathematical knowlege, we have made significant progress in this direction and can hope for a practicable online alternative to the departmental library in the near future.
The third point is where, in my opinion, we are furthest lagging. While people use the Planet Math fora to obtain answers to specific research-related questions, it doesn’t go much further than that. Asteroid seems to have been more successful in this respect — Joe, Aaron, and I have collaborated on various scientific and humanistic projects here and had broad-ranging philosophical discussions.
What I would love to be able to do is, for instance, post some of my thoughts on, say, differential geometry on finitary spaces or systems of differential equations as monotone covariant maps on ordered algebras of functionals or prime spectra of C* algebras and non-standard analysis or monotonic maps of rings and get some discussion going. Perhaps someone will point out some relevant references — for all I know someone has already thought these ideas through and worked them out,so I can read the answer somewhere. Maybe other people will join in with further questions or thoughts and insights. Pretty soon, we might make some progress on these issues and thereby expand mathematical knowledge.
I suppose that the major obstacle here is more social than technological. A good number of active members are also researchers, yet I don’t see much discussion of current issue on which they are working. I am not sure why this is the case. Do people feel that this is somehow inappropriate in this setting? Are they afraid of having their ideas scooped? To be sure, there is a strong opposition to including new material in the encyclopaedia, but that can’t be the whole story because there is more to PM than the encyclopaedia.
Already, people could certainly be posting copies of their research to the papers section but this seems not to have caught on. I have seen and downloaded online copies of their work from their homepages and other place. Sure, an improved paper section would help but the existing section is just fine for the purpose of making work available. Maybe people are put of by the questionable quality of some of what is to be found there and afraid that inclusion of their work would reflect badly on them? I think that any such concern would be allayed if enough people put their work there that the questionable content would be overwhelmed by solid work of high quality. Besides, one could post messages to alert readers to problems and inaccuracies in contributions.
Once we can get people interested in discussing their research, we could think of expanding to include such things as virtual colloquia, whether synchronous or asynchronous. As Joe pointed out, our recent discussion of my article on integral representations of recursive functions could serve as a first approximation to such an undertaking.
If we can get enough fellow denizens of PM interested in discussing their research interests and collaborating online, then maybe we could start implementing infrastructure which makes this easier whenever we finally get around to redoing noosphere, begin building our e-institute, and offer mathematicians in non-tradiditonal settings a plausible alternative setting in which to parcipate in research. –rspuzio
I would be happy to focus on the specific issues I had in mind when I said counter-culture and drop the term itself.
These include, again (and possibly with redundancy while still leaving out some major points):
- learning at your own pace
- taking advantage of the system rather than the other way ‘round
- being self-directed
I announce that some of these may best be considered to be ideals. E.g. perhaps one can only be self-directed to within some approximation. Furthermore, pursuit of some of the ideals may sometimes be destructive to certain other goals. E.g. if everyone takes advantage of the system in a greedy way, we might get a tragedy of the commons.
So, these sorts of ideals are meant to be balanced with a degree of common sense.
A few other major “counter-culture” issues are
- wanting to change the system
- wanting to create new, alternative, systems
- actually creating and using alternative systems
Finally, one can cultivate a “counter-culture” image by pure association – although I don’t know if one can actually be “counter-culture” just by cultivating such an image. Perhaps to some degree. Association can create symbols, and symbols can be very meaningful.
I’m sure I haven’t adequately defined the term at all! Maybe my attempt at making some definition in terms of “issues” has only further confused these or other issues. I hope not, but who knows!
Again, in this second category, these things aren’t meant as absolutes. E.g. one can certainly try to change the system from within the system, which isn’t really “counter-” at all; in addition, one can create and use alternative systems at the same time as continuing to use the standard system, and, again, that isn’t really “counter-“, it is actually just “co-“. In some ways and some contexts, I would be happy to describe my sentiments as “co-culture” instead of “counter-culture”.
The fact is, however, that, at least as I was coming up, I felt that things like “being self-directed” or even “learning at my own pace” were often very radical things to do. They often made me different from my peers, and sometimes they caused problems for me with my teachers. This was certainly the case in graduate school – when I was being even more non-conformant than ever before, essentially breaking all of the unwritten rules I could handle, and a few of the written ones too. I don’t care if we describe that behavior as counter-culture or not; but I suppose that when I introduced that term into the discourse, it was because I liked some of the associations that it holds.
For me, scholarship and training have often been in opposition to established systems; either because ”they” want something from me I don’t want to give, or because they don’t offer me what I want from them.
Perhaps I have a classic “attitude problem” – but I like to think of myself as having an attitude solution. The attitude is: even the best systems are flawed, and if I can figure out what the flaws are, I can either find a work-around, or an exploit, or, sometimes, actually come up with a better system.
Historically, I have been perfectly willing to be direct in what I say and do coming out of this attitude, with just about anyone. I try to treat people with respect and typically they treat me with respect. My frustrations with the system are not the fault of any one individual, nor can any one individual typically resolve them. (These points go for me as well as anyone else.) Solving personal frustrations can sometimes be done on personal (i.e. individual) terms – however, sometimes they have to be done at the system level.
In light of this, “system hacking” might work as a stand-in term for “counter-culture” in my usage. If you prefer that.
Final note: the Way of the Asteroid was meant to be a rubric for coming up with strategies that work at a certain time, and for oneself. While there may be some global answers to questions about life (including “independent scholarship”), I would for the time being be more comfortable as case study in the “guide” you are talking about above than as an author; I’m not sure I can consider myself to be an authority on the topic of independent scholarship, even though I am happy to share my thoughts on the matter. For example, I can tell you, this is roughly what went through my head when I set foot in my office at grad school:
The world is a vampire, sent to drain [...]
Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage
:: – (from “Bullet With Butterfly Wings”, The Smashing Pumpkins)
(It would appear that at this particular moment in my life, I had more of an attitude problem than an attitude solution; but I think that changed to some degree as time passed, and I started to figure a few things out.)
The song as a whole is analyzed by one “Sarah” out on the Internets, as follows
No matter what I do i'll never be good enough for you. My efforts,
and kindness, and everything I do for you goes unnoticed. Everything has been stripped from me, even when i’m angry and hurt by what you said and did to me, it just doesnt matter. I just want to be the one, the one i’ll never get to be.
She has it more in terms of personal relationships than in terms of professional development. But it could be applied without any terrible inaccuracy to my case.
Luckily, like I said, I figured a few things out after that.
I like Smashing Pumpkins. That song is a favorite of mine :0) I also like Rage Against The Machine.
“Counter-Culture” is imprecise, but not wholly wrong. For sure :) It may make more sense, maybe, in Ohio than Berkeley, unless you are counter counter-culture.
Still, if “culture” is what we see on TV in the action-drama shows and the “newsetainment”, then by all means, go Counter.
I feel a great sense of urgency though, far beyond being against mere “culture” and the mental oppressions of “The System.” We are now in a situation as a country where we have begun and failed to end two wars – Afghanistan and Iraq – and the probability of a new war involving Iran is greater than 33% within the next two years, IMO. Plans have been laid for the US to nuke Iran, pre-emptively. It is not beyond imagining that before 2009 the common description of the state of affairs is World War 3; later historians will mark 9/11/2001 as the technical start of WW3, but mark the war with Iran as the Rubicon, the point of no return which required the involvement of the other great powers to deter the American government from further nuclear attacks.
From today’s commentaries:
- [http://www.antiwar.com/pat/?articleid=8574 Buchanan]
- [http://www.antiwar.com/orig/hirsch.php?articleid=8577 Paul]
- [http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=8578 Raimondo]
- [http://www.antiwar.com/orig/hirsch.php?articleid=8577 Hirsch]
There is a little time left. Live wisely – and fully.
And if you are going to Rage Against The Machine, then this is the time.
</End of counter-cultural PSYOP Rant>
–ocat
OK, I think I understand more about where you are coming from. Part of it is one expects cultural change to happen too slowly to matter much at the time scales that are forced on us, not so much by the system, but by the spectacular nature of the system (to borrow from my situationist buddies).
"The spectacle is not a collection of images but a social relation
among people mediated by images… The spectacle in general, as the concrete inversion of life, is the autonomous movement of the non-living… The liar has lied to himself.” –Guy Debord, via [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situationist Wikipedia]
Your emphasis on logic is perhaps about debugging things like that (on the fly, of course).
As for the WW3-related urgency of which you speak; I am reminded of “Watchmen” by Alan Moore (yet another comic that deals with WW3 possibilities; but this one is actually quite good). You might not like the “answer” they give there (this answer being sort of like 9/11 on steroids); nevertheless, I think that the spirit of the “masked hero” they get at in that book is something that would jive with your sensibilities!
A hero of that sort seems likely to always be contra society’s norms in some ways, even if the hero is a friend of society.
I don’t know whether the proposal I outline at social, political, and economic scholium systems would actually make a sufficient difference if the time scale to apocalypse is sufficiently sped up. The proposal is “counter culture” in a sense similar to that in which the Whole Earth Catalog is counter culture. Specifically, it is counter to the !WalMarting of the world (both psychic and physical).
Assuming we have the opportunity to pull something like that off, I think we’d be wise to do it! If exigencies of war etc. preclude that option, then we should try to have reasonably fall-back strategies in place (so far as that is possible). The only thing along these lines that I can think of is to undertake a massive graffiti campaign, in which we physically attach scholia to various artifacts, saying things similar to what we would have hoped to say in the computer system I mentioned.
While all you say is well and good and do not wish to come across as dismissing it, I don’t have much to add on that topic and would like to get back to the issue of how to create an alternative research environment for those who are unable to or uninterested in participating in the usual academic research culture. As I mentioned before, there are some of us here who have been acitvely using Asteroid in order to carry out discussions on research topics and write up our progress. Hoewever, I am still puzzled by the fact that, although there are a good number of people on the Planet who are involved in mathematical research yet they say next to nothing about their research interests and typically I have only found out that they were researchers by following links to their home pages or incidental remarks in their posts. What could be done to change this situation?
The most obvious place for research on PM is the papers section but that is severly underused, despite the fact that the first paper was submitted in 2002 (in the intervening 4 years, only 27 items have been submitted). While improving the program would be nice, I can’t believe that that is the sole reason for the underwhelming interest. As it stands, people could easily enough post preprints, reprints, or whatever of their research articles and comment on each others’ work, but I don’t see that happening. When I posted a paper and asked for people to comment, the only reply I got was a remark to the effect that I should post to ArXiv since that is where people put preprints. My article vanished in a system crash and, as I wasn’t able to put it up and noone was reading it anyway I took it down. Now that the problem has been fixed, I plan to put a revised version up soon. I would like to know why people are not interested in putting up copies of their articles here even though they distribute them from their home pages.
The research forum is mainly used for posting specific quick questons arising from research problems. I suspect that one can not expect much more from it since the lack of support for equations makes it difficult to discuss mathematics of any complexity. This, of course, would be relatively easy to fix. Maybe by doing this and other improvements to the system, one could come up with a platform which would be suited to longer, detailed conversations on topics of research interest. In particular, I think it would be neat if some of these discussions would lead to new results.
Speaking of research forum, it would be nice to have people talking about typical current research, not just famous milestones like the proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem or the Four Colour Theorem, but less celebrated, more ordinary results as well. I could also imagine discussions about the direction in which research in different fields is going, methods that are being used, and the like.
Joe made a suggestion of an online colloquium and Aaron pointed out that there the IRC math channel has been doing such a thing for a while. While their colloquia have a pedagogical slant, we could certainly have some sort of online colloquia for people to explain their research interests or current research by others followed by questions and discussion on these topics.
We might have some sort of matchmaking service in which people could look for collaborators on projects which they might be interested in working on.
It would be good to have something like a noosphere category for items of current research or new results or a separate area for posting such things.
It seems that there is more we could do to promote and support research (in the social as opposed to the financial sense) and provide an environment which is helpful to independant mathematicians. –rspuzio