Team:St Andrews/project/ethics
Human Practices
Introduction
"Know well what leads you forward and what holds you back and choose the path that leads to wisdom" - Buddha'
The word science is derived from the Latin word "scientia" meaning knowledge and this meaning is quite apt. While science may encapsulate so many theories, practices, methodologies and other such notions it all comes down to the basis of knowledge. Asides from in the contemplations of many an epistemologist, knowledge is first and foremost concerned with people. It is hence fair to say that the entire basis of scientific practice rests upon the shoulders of the people within its ranks. Given this realisation it is essential for means and methodologies which people use to communicate, organise and share knowledge to be studied, understood and improved. In turn, with solid human foundations the aquisition and dissemination of knowlege can be streamlined enhancing the scientific community and improving the quality of knowlege. In order to advanced such a goal we examined four crucial elements affecting human practices:
- Community
- Ethics
- Communicaiton
- Innovation and Intellectual Property
Communicaiton
Realtime Internet communication is incrasingly common, the so called facebook generation are growing up aquainted with a dizzying array of instantanous comunication methods. The inception of email was hearlded as a revolution in communication, today the quantity of email traffic is at an all time low. In place of email instance messaging and social network messaging have come to precidence. Combined with the vast quanitites of blogs, forum posts, wikis and other forms of user generated content the volume of publically acessible communications is immense. From a human practices perspective this provides a vast and frequently changing dataset which gives insight into how people communicate.