transitlab

28 Jun, 2010

Citizen Science

First science was observation…..this was the naturalism, the counting of fingers etc. But at some point people felt that they had reached the edges of their perception, so they invented an external technology. This technology was instrumentation or in the case of biology instrumentation and model systems.

This kind of science has at its base many of the concepts of signal processing.
Through mixing a known and unknown signal we can do some mathamatical operations of it. Basically a transduction of a signal outside of us and our understanding (For an example see optics)
We need to separate the different ideas

1) citizen science = a citizen setting a science question and working out how to answer it
2) crowd sourcing = a scientist setting a question and getting everyone to participate. (big science framework)

What other types of science are there?

2 Responses to "Citizen Science"

1 | Kris Hemin

July 8th, 2010 at 9:41 am

I resonated to the phrase “Citizen Science” so Googled it. Yours are the best definitions I found. To 1) I would add independence of thought, objectivity. Corporate and institutional science has so lost that element that the CS has a crucial function. So long as he/she is ever listened to.

A CS can “crowd source” most readily, of course, but also meets the objections of sampling bias, amateurism etc.

2 | Brian

July 8th, 2010 at 11:12 am

Kris Hemin,
thanks for the vote of confidence.
Also quite interested in the idea of a community science, one that is specific to a certain crowd of people.
Its more of a social kind of science, or a way of asking people what they want the black boxes in their life to do.

Comment Form

Terry King: Take a look at ArduBlock which is pretty mature already and has some support from the Arduino developers: http://groups.google.com/group/ardublock
Brian: Corrected, Cheers B
a: it's spelled NORTD.. and AWESOME photo.. !

About

Brian Degger is a technologist/artist, he writes, thinks and makes around themes of interactivity, biomimicracy, and collaboration

Asides

PDF import and editing in openoffice
One function I have found useful in openoffice is the ability to import pdfs. This is possible by downloading and installing the pdfimport plugin. This means that you can import a pdf, edit it then output it at a lower resolution for screen. (2)

miniFM

In the foreground is a Tetsuo Kogawa version (built during RadioCraftLab, during AVFest08) and in the back the remix by sonodrome (built last week at Sonodrome Central). Both assembled by me.

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Bioplastic
Jay Cousins and friends had a hackday around bioplastics and laser cutting. Making the bioplastic from starch and glycerin (see this link for more details) and then laser cutting them. Cool stuff, they were even making different color ones. This is important as people move from using commercially sourced plastic in their makerbots to something else. Plastic is expensive to buy for these machines, but it is all around. SO be it bio-plastic or post waste plastic, ways of reusing these provide a compelling reason to throw away less waste. It is amazing that these materials are coming out of the factories, to be used in domestic situations. Together with polymorph and sugru, there are a variety of materials to play around for wearables, for prototypes and one offs. Bring on the future, with peer production.

Maker Faire Newcastle is March 13-14, 2010 (makezine.com)
Bioplastics – the quest for Open Source material production (jaycousins.wordpress.com)

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augmented foraging - cool use of layar -

augmented foraging Originally uploaded by _foam A mobile phone guide to edible urban wild-food sources.

Amsterdam urban_ edibles is developing Augmented_Foraging, a mobile phone guide to wild-food sources using Layar. Much better use of this program than finding property in Amsterdam (unless you live there of course)!

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