A web without science...

Via Science Commons, a FT columnist posits that the web isn't being used enough by science. This is ironic because the web is, at its most basic level, wholly scientific.

Snip:
"The world wide web was designed in a scientific laboratory to facilitate access to scientific knowledge. In every other area of life - commerce, social networking, pornography - it has been a smashing success. But in the world of science itself? With the virtues of an open web all around us, we have proceeded to build an endless set of walled gardens, something that looks [...] very little like a world wide web for science."

His argument is that the world of scientific research should make much better use of the basic function of the web, its ability to connect two hitherto unrelated points. This "web of interconnections" and its ability to allow people to connect the dots is what makes the World Wide Web so unbelievably powerful. "We gain not only the knowledge in the content," Boyle writes, "but the knowledge supplied by those who read the content, who make connections the original author could not."