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
12 - What's wrong in Computopia, April 1992
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
Professor Mozart burst into my office, waving the January 1992 issue of Physics Today. “What are you doing here, W. A.?” I greeted him in surprise. “I thought you were abroad fund-raising for the SSC!”
“Just got back,” he gasped, having apparently run up all five flights of stairs. “Castro says he'll provide all the cigars if we can persuade Bush to lift the sugar quota. Just sent Bromley a memo. Don't see how Congress can drag its feet any longer—especially when we remind them that accelerator physics gave us ride-on lawn mowers, sliced bread, and the compact disc. But what about this response to your call last May for the abolition of journals in favor of electronic bulletin boards? Ten letters to the editor—all but two hostile? As a pundit, you've got it made!”
“Thank you,” I replied sourly, “but the fact is I received even more letters that were wildly enthusiastic—by far the biggest response I've ever had.”
“Don't tell me,” he said, lighting up an enormous Havana. “All the favorable correspondence came by email. No copies to Physics Today. Shun the print media. Matter of principle.”
“You've got it,” I confirmed, suppressing a gasp myself. “My supporters are all children of the network. I doubt they even use the telephone anymore, except as ancillary to a modem. They want me to lead the way into the shining electronic future, writing software, designing hardware, lobbying professional societies, organizing boycotts, raising funds …”
“Leave the fund-raising to me,” he ordered through the smoke. “Your immediate problem is to answer your critics. How could you have expected to attack the refereeing process and come out unscathed? Don't you realize most people can't write an acceptable laundry list without peer review? Without referees we'd soon be promulgating inchoate blather. Can you imagine what Hamlet must have looked like the first time Shakespeare submitted it? Why, somebody once told me that Othello is what Titus Andronicus turned into after half a dozen exchanges. And you want to abolish refereeing!”
“Never mind how peer review operates under the current system,” I interrupted. “What none of the critics have noticed is how much better it will work in Computopia.”
“No doubt you're thinking,” he murmured through the fog, eyes half closed, “of a parallel bulletin board of criticisms and errata.”
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- Why Quark Rhymes with PorkAnd Other Scientific Diversions, pp. 82 - 89Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2016