Open Source Science: Participatory Learning Rocks!

There's a great post on O'Reilly today that exemplifies open source science and one form of what we are calling "participatory learning." A. Garrett Lisi is using Wikis to support Open Source Science. Read and watch the video at: http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2008/09/lisi-on-a-wiki.html

Video: A. Garrett Lisi on Using Wikis to Support Open Source Science

By Timothy M. O'Brien
September 25, 2008

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A. Garrett Lisi is a TheoreticalPhysicist who has been developing a novel (and somewhat controversial)unified field theory known as the "An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything". You may have read about his work in the recent New Yorker Magazine Profile "Surfing the Universe" or the article in Outside Magazine titled "Has A Surfer/Snowboarder Who Lives In A Van Rewritten Physics? Maybe."Read these articles, and you'll walk away with the impression that Lisiis an interesting character challenging the institutional, academicinertia that has come to define the pursuit of Science.

What brings Lisi to the pages of oreilly.comisn't the snowboarding or the "living a van" aspect of his personalstory (although, admittedly, that is interesting). I'm also not writingto give you a summary of the E8 theory; I understand it only on afuzzy, "surfacy" level, and there are glossy, biography-focusedtechnology magazines which will satisfy your hunger for pop sciencefactoids mixed with cool snowboarding pictures. It isn't the scienceI'm interested in, it is his embrace of technology and openness as acentral feature of his own research. His personal story is relevant inthat it sets up a context of revolution and initiative which reminds meof some of the motivations of open source contributors in the lastdecade. He's something akin to Linus Torvalds or Eric Raymond: one ofmany emerging voices for openness and transparency in the "openscience" movement.