Russ Steele
The Summer 2010 Humanity+ Conference is emphasizing DIY with the brilliant theme "The Rise of the Citizen Scientist."
Humanity+ Executive Director Alex Lighman is encouraging the crowdsourcing approach to problem solving: “Knowledge may be expanding exponentially, but the current rate of civilizational learning and institutional upgrading is still far too slow in the century of peak oil, peak uranium, and 'peak everything.' Humanity needs to gather vastly more data as part of ever larger and more widespread scientific experiments, and make science and technology flourish in streets, fields, and homes as well as in university and corporate laboratories.”
Reading about this conference I was reminded of Anthony Watts Surface Stations Survey which relied on volunteers all across the nation to survey the 1221 USHCN surface stations in the United States. Details here.
This survey was a form of crowdsourcing to solve a problem too large for a single individual citizen scientist. You can find the latest update on the scientific progress resulting from the initial Surface Station Survey project here: Surface Temperature Records:Policy Driven Deception
Anthony, thanks for introducing me to the role of a citizens scientist, and the power of citizen science crowdsourcing.
