Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Part One Reference Frame Columns, Physics Today 1988–2009
- 1 What's wrong with this Lagrangean, April 1988
- 2 What's wrong with this library, August 1988
- 3 What's wrong with these prizes, January 1989
- 4 What's wrong with this pillow, April 1989
- 5 What's wrong with this prose, May 1989
- 6 What's wrong with these equations, October 1989
- 7 What's wrong with these elements of reality, June 1990
- 8 What's wrong with these reviews, August 1990
- 9 What's wrong with those epochs, November 1990
- 10 Publishing in Computopia, May 1991
- 11 What's wrong with those grants, June 1991
- 12 What's wrong in Computopia, April 1992
- 13 What's wrong with those talks, November 1992
- 14 Two lectures on the wave–particle duality, January 1993
- 15 A quarrel we can settle, December 1993
- 16 What's wrong with this temptation, June 1994
- 17 What's wrong with this sustaining myth, March 1996
- 18 The golemization of relativity, April 1996
- 19 Diary of a Nobel guest, March 1997
- 20 What's wrong with this reading, October 1997
- 21 How not to create tigers, August 1999
- 22 What's wrong with this elegance, March 2000
- 23 The contemplation of quantum computation, July 2000
- 24 What's wrong with these questions, February 2001
- 25 What's wrong with this quantum world, February 2004
- 26 Could Feynman have said this? May 2004
- 27 My life with Einstein, December 2005
- 28 What has quantum mechanics to do with factoring? April 2007
- 29 Some curious facts about quantum factoring, October 2007
- 30 What's bad about this habit, May 2009
- Part Two Shedding Bad Habits
- Part Three More from Professor Mozart
- Part Four More to be Said
- Part Five Some People I've Known
- Part Six Summing it Up
- Index
10 - Publishing in Computopia, May 1991
from Part One - Reference Frame Columns, Physics Today 1988–2009
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2016
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Part One Reference Frame Columns, Physics Today 1988–2009
- 1 What's wrong with this Lagrangean, April 1988
- 2 What's wrong with this library, August 1988
- 3 What's wrong with these prizes, January 1989
- 4 What's wrong with this pillow, April 1989
- 5 What's wrong with this prose, May 1989
- 6 What's wrong with these equations, October 1989
- 7 What's wrong with these elements of reality, June 1990
- 8 What's wrong with these reviews, August 1990
- 9 What's wrong with those epochs, November 1990
- 10 Publishing in Computopia, May 1991
- 11 What's wrong with those grants, June 1991
- 12 What's wrong in Computopia, April 1992
- 13 What's wrong with those talks, November 1992
- 14 Two lectures on the wave–particle duality, January 1993
- 15 A quarrel we can settle, December 1993
- 16 What's wrong with this temptation, June 1994
- 17 What's wrong with this sustaining myth, March 1996
- 18 The golemization of relativity, April 1996
- 19 Diary of a Nobel guest, March 1997
- 20 What's wrong with this reading, October 1997
- 21 How not to create tigers, August 1999
- 22 What's wrong with this elegance, March 2000
- 23 The contemplation of quantum computation, July 2000
- 24 What's wrong with these questions, February 2001
- 25 What's wrong with this quantum world, February 2004
- 26 Could Feynman have said this? May 2004
- 27 My life with Einstein, December 2005
- 28 What has quantum mechanics to do with factoring? April 2007
- 29 Some curious facts about quantum factoring, October 2007
- 30 What's bad about this habit, May 2009
- Part Two Shedding Bad Habits
- Part Three More from Professor Mozart
- Part Four More to be Said
- Part Five Some People I've Known
- Part Six Summing it Up
- Index
Summary
I have just finished writing a short technical article that ties together two old, important, and previously unrelated results in a surprising way that simplifies and elucidates them both. It is self-contained and readable, and the formal analysis it employs is extremely simple; it will be cited in textbooks. I make a list of people I think might be interested. The field is a small one, so I start from memory. Next, I go through some conference proceedings I happen to have at hand, to get addresses and catch people I might have missed. I end up with about 50 names and addresses. I fiddle around with the formatting parameters to squeeze the paper into only eight pages, so that my secretary can print it reduced on just two sheets of paper to save postage and copying costs—my grant has been cut. When all the copies are in the mail I return to my computer, unsqueeze the paper, move the footnotes from the bottoms of the pages, where they are easy to read, to the end of the manuscript, as the rules require, and make four more copies that I send off to Physical Review Letters.
What's wrong with this story? What strange, irrational, one might even say unprofessional act have I just described?
Was it wasteful of me to inflict this burden on so many in-baskets, knowing that considerably fewer than half the recipients will look at my paper? Not at all! I will be content if a dozen people take a serious look—that will be enough for my message to propagate—and I have followed the best strategy to bring that about.
Was I, then, foolish to waste paper, postage, and secretarial time in this old-fashioned effort at communication, when email would have done the trick effortlessly? Not yet! Not all my correspondents communicate in that way, I lack the electronic addresses of many of those who do, and surely somebody (though I have no idea who) is paying for all those email transmissions, so the monetary savings to society as a whole may be at least in part illusory.
Was it, perhaps, absurd of me to lavish extreme care on these preprints, rearranging the footnotes for easier reading, and even worrying about the proper choice of fonts to convey to my readers as clearly as possible the relations between the tiny sections and subsections?
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- Why Quark Rhymes with PorkAnd Other Scientific Diversions, pp. 67 - 74Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2016