One part of the green movement that doesn’t get enough attention is the need to share information, research, inventions, tips for greener living, or anything else that will benefit the world. This topic is particularly important to me, and it’s part of the reason I started this blog. The Biodiesel Series posts were actually sections from my graduate research paper in Environmental Management. I don’t believe anything I did was groundbreaking, but sharing and summarizing what I found in my own research has the potential to inspire others to do something similar, or possibly just save someone time in locating previous work for their own research.
The work itself took a great deal of time, but it would have gone to waste if the TA was the only one to read it. The act of breaking up the sections and posting to this blog took less than 1% of my total time in the project. The extra 1% it takes to share research makes a HUGE difference.
The world would be much worse off if inventors, scientists and researchers chose to keep their work secret. There are so many other examples, but what if Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla chose not to share their work about electricity? One could argue that someone else would have come along to do the same thing, which I believe to be the case, but it would not have been until much later, and the progress of humanity would have been delayed by years.
Among many other things, Tesla’s inventions and research led to the technology used to generate electricity in most power plants and wind turbines today. Holding back information from the world only serves to impede progress. The lack of a platform to distribute the same information can be just as bad.
The Science Commons project’s main focus is to encourage the sharing of information, and to provide a platform to do it. Recently they launched GreenXchange, a sub-section with the goal of sharing green innovations. We would progress without projects like GreenXchange, but information sharing initiatives like these drastically accelerate the pace at which we can do it.
Hi there,
Not sure that this is true:), but thanks for a post.
Follow Up Post: http://econuz.com/2009/07/14/follow-up-sharing-your-research/