When is Enough Too Much?
- PDF / 1,235,114 Bytes
- 2 Pages / 604.8 x 806.4 pts Page_size
- 60 Downloads / 227 Views
When is Enough Too Much? Elton N. Kaufmann
Or to put it another way, just how many information sources can a topic tolerate before saturation sets in? Coverage of the activities surrounding the new high temperature ceramic-oxide superconductors may help provide an answer. There is a flood of scientific and technical information which properly reflects the frenzied activity in laboratories around the world. Existing media, originally intended for communication between scientists, have been hard pressed to keep pace. Special "high Tc" sections or complete issues have been offered by regular journals. Society meetings*as well as other normally recurring topical conferences have run special sessions which have been oversubscribed and very exciting. In the face of this onslaught of technical reporting, editors and organizers have implemented expediting measures to handle the volume and the pace while attempting to maintain reasonable reviewing standards. Ad hoc technical meetings have also been popping up—some with narrow focus and some more general. To the extent that the field is moving rapidly and gaps between regular meetings need filling, these have been useful. To the extent that a small meeting or workshop serves a particular local audience most of whom would otherwise remain uninformed, these too make sense. The meetings produce abstracts and proceedings volumes which can be useful references for a short time. But the combined effect of this deluge of meetings and publications fills our shelves and calendars, making it difficult to stay abreast of the field and to discriminate among the myriad information options. In the midst of the technical barrage, another vacuum didn't wait long to be filled. Enter the venture capitalists, the entrepreneurs, the economic, science and technology policy makers and analysts— and new heights are being reached by the stacks of newsletters and conference announcements on our desks. The focus of a great many of the corresponding meetings and publications is toward commer-
cialization, forecasting trends for the benefit of business, translating technical advances into investors' terms, and so forth. These interests pursue the most active and prominent scientists in the field. Coupled with the technical events, the speaking circuit is so active that one wonders who's watching the lab. From a cursory reading of the last four 1987 issues of High Tc Update published at Ames National Laboratory one can count: at least 14 new newsletters and magazines focused on the new materials;1 11 more preexisting, more general, newsletters now covering this field too;2 over 15 special reports, studies, surveys, transcripts, reprint collections, and directories;3 one new and one existing electronic data base;4 three new journals and two new journal sections;15 three new membership organizations;6 and four stand-alone conferences devoted to a nontechnical commercialization focus.7 This list would go on if it included printed and videotaped proceedings, materials kits for young and old, etc. Quality
Data Loading...
