"Ahora te comprendo abuelo..."
A quien engañas abuelo - Arnulfo Briceño
Hace un par de días empecé a leer "Memorias de la guerra de los Mil Días" por Lucas Caballero, una colección de escritos originalmente publicados por El Tiempo en 1938. El libro lo compré cuando estuve en Colombia hace un año pero aún no lo había empezado. Lo compré porque como la sabiduría popular dice, "aquellos que no conocen el pasado están condenados a repetir".
Y es que por estos días, tras leer este post donde el autor se pregunta por qué citadinos colombianos creen haber sido europeos en sus (imaginarias) vidas pasadas, he estado pensando en la razón por la cual nuestra historia no es parte evidente de nuestra memoria o cultura colectiva.
No hay necesidad de tener vidas pasadas; bastaría preguntarle a un vecino (colombiano) por un hecho histórico relevante de los últimos 200 años... cuántos responderíamos un hecho histórico ocurrido en Europa? cuántos responderíamos "la independecia de Colombia"?
Pero nuestra historia sí formaba parte de nuestra cultura, al menos unos años atrás, como se canta en este bambuco. Cuándo fue que nos olvidamos? .. o fue que nos hicieron olvidar?
Para terminar, quisiera citar una de las frases introductorias de Luis Caballero.
"Hombres, partidos o pueblos que se resignan a la abdicación de derechos, más que políticos, humanos, se traicionan a ellos mismos. Ese sentimiento alienta, y ojalá para siempre, la noble altivez de los colombianos".
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Open Access Day - How are we sharing our knowledge?
I am writing this blog because today, October 14th, is the first Open Access Day.
This day is an open invitation to think over the ways in which we share our knowledge. This blog is my own, personal reflection on how I first became involved almost 10 years ago.
I studied Biology during the late 90's in the National University of Colombia, my hometown country, and I loved it. Full of endless surprises, so many things about living beings that you could not imagine, from the beautiful molecular structures to the fact that living beings actually evolve.
.. the beautiful molecular structures! ... I wanted to learn more about them. So I started reading.
The more general papers were easy to find, just a short trip to the library being required. However, from time to time it happened that I learned about this AWESOME thing that proteins can do... like being able to preserve the size of our chromosomes by adding over and over the same sequence at the end.
Wanting to learn more about it, I used to ran back to the library with the references in my hand, just to discover -to my disappointment- that THAT particular journal was not available. NEITHER that other one. NOR that one. Getting particular pieces of information about specific research was getting difficult for a college student like me.
Anyway, time passed by and, being the resources for experimental research in molecular biology limited in my country, I decided to focus my work on theoretical biology.
Then I learned that theoretical biology requires a lot of reading. And that many papers whose titles seemed provocative were just... unavailable. Papers describing the latest discovery were unavailable, papers describing very old experiments that could give me an historic perspective were unavailable, papers published in very specific journals were unavailable.
I was feeling uncomfortable. How were we going to think about Biology, how were we going to create links between apparently unrelated facts, develop more unified theories, deal with the huge amount of newly produced information, tell the people about the beauty of nature, if the information seemed to be kept away from the people willing to think, create, develop, deal with, communicate? Is information still "information" when it is kept locked, not being communicated?
In those days I also learned that I was not the only one feeling uncomfortable with that situation. People around the world was having the same doubts, and I joined them in one of the first initiatives by signing this Open Letter. I did not believe my name was going to make a big difference, me a college student in a small country. But I did sing it anyway because those were the principles I believed in.
Time kept passing by and nowadays I do not think about Open Access as often as I should.
Fortunately, there are days like today, where I can sit down and remember that I still believe that the society, from the academic to the artist to the everyday person, has the right to nurture itself with the scientific knowledge that is being produced. That I still believe that the information that is not shared has less chances to survive, because information needs to be integrated in the wider web of knowledge, a process that may require the interaction of all of us.
Fortunately, there is also people around me to remind me about this.
Thanks for reading.
P.S. I first read about the Open Access Day here
This day is an open invitation to think over the ways in which we share our knowledge. This blog is my own, personal reflection on how I first became involved almost 10 years ago.
I studied Biology during the late 90's in the National University of Colombia, my hometown country, and I loved it. Full of endless surprises, so many things about living beings that you could not imagine, from the beautiful molecular structures to the fact that living beings actually evolve.
.. the beautiful molecular structures! ... I wanted to learn more about them. So I started reading.
The more general papers were easy to find, just a short trip to the library being required. However, from time to time it happened that I learned about this AWESOME thing that proteins can do... like being able to preserve the size of our chromosomes by adding over and over the same sequence at the end.
Wanting to learn more about it, I used to ran back to the library with the references in my hand, just to discover -to my disappointment- that THAT particular journal was not available. NEITHER that other one. NOR that one. Getting particular pieces of information about specific research was getting difficult for a college student like me.
Anyway, time passed by and, being the resources for experimental research in molecular biology limited in my country, I decided to focus my work on theoretical biology.
Then I learned that theoretical biology requires a lot of reading. And that many papers whose titles seemed provocative were just... unavailable. Papers describing the latest discovery were unavailable, papers describing very old experiments that could give me an historic perspective were unavailable, papers published in very specific journals were unavailable.
I was feeling uncomfortable. How were we going to think about Biology, how were we going to create links between apparently unrelated facts, develop more unified theories, deal with the huge amount of newly produced information, tell the people about the beauty of nature, if the information seemed to be kept away from the people willing to think, create, develop, deal with, communicate? Is information still "information" when it is kept locked, not being communicated?
In those days I also learned that I was not the only one feeling uncomfortable with that situation. People around the world was having the same doubts, and I joined them in one of the first initiatives by signing this Open Letter. I did not believe my name was going to make a big difference, me a college student in a small country. But I did sing it anyway because those were the principles I believed in.
Time kept passing by and nowadays I do not think about Open Access as often as I should.
Fortunately, there are days like today, where I can sit down and remember that I still believe that the society, from the academic to the artist to the everyday person, has the right to nurture itself with the scientific knowledge that is being produced. That I still believe that the information that is not shared has less chances to survive, because information needs to be integrated in the wider web of knowledge, a process that may require the interaction of all of us.
Fortunately, there is also people around me to remind me about this.
Thanks for reading.
P.S. I first read about the Open Access Day here
Monday, October 13, 2008
Libre Acceso a la información científica - Open Access Day
"Shout it out now, I want to hear it loud"
Shout it out - TBCB
Hago uso del copiar-pegar para reproducir aquí un correo que a muchos de ustedes, mis conocidos y amigos, acabo de enviarles. Si ya lo recibieron, y ya lo leyeron, y ya pensaron acerca del Libre Acceso a la información, y ya se preguntaron de dónde me saldría ese espíritu rebelde, entonces pueden pasar al siguiente post que, por cierto, es sobre el mismo tema (aunque aún no sé si alcance a traducirlo al español).
No sé quienes leen mi blog, y a veces hay alguien que -sin querer- dejo por fuera de mi lista de correos.
Shout it out - TBCB
Hago uso del copiar-pegar para reproducir aquí un correo que a muchos de ustedes, mis conocidos y amigos, acabo de enviarles. Si ya lo recibieron, y ya lo leyeron, y ya pensaron acerca del Libre Acceso a la información, y ya se preguntaron de dónde me saldría ese espíritu rebelde, entonces pueden pasar al siguiente post que, por cierto, es sobre el mismo tema (aunque aún no sé si alcance a traducirlo al español).
No sé quienes leen mi blog, y a veces hay alguien que -sin querer- dejo por fuera de mi lista de correos.
Hola,
Les escribo este correo porque hoy, 14 de Octubre, se celebra el primer día del Acceso Abierto a la información científica, el cuál busca ser una reflexión acerca de los métodos actuales de distribución y acceso a la información académica.
Enviar este correo es mi forma de participar.
Algunos de ustedes son investigadores, profesores o estudiantes. Otros son comunicadores, diseñadores o artistas. Pero sé que todos son personas inquietas, con un amplio rango de intereses, y por eso quiero compartir con ustedes esta inquietud acerca de la posibilidad de distribuir de manera libre el conocimiento.
El movimiento Open Access propone que la información científica que haya sido producida con financiación pública, debería estar disponible para la comunidad, de manera libre, en internet, inmediatamente después de ser publicada, y no a través de revistas con acceso limitado y -usualmente- altos costos de suscripción.
Como parte de las actividades se van a presentar en línea algunos videos a cargo de Sir Richard Roberts (para los biólogos: el descubridor del RNA splicing) y Philip E. Bourne (fundador y editor de PLoS Computational Biology), hay un concurso de sincro-blogging (blogs simultáneos alrededor del mundo), sugerencias para promover la idea y más.
Encuentran la información en éste link: Open Access Day
Y claro, independiente de si pueden o no participar de esta actividad, lo importante es reflexionar acerca del significado de la propiedad intelectual, de quiénes están recibiendo la información, el conocimiento y la cultura que se crea y se construye en los ambientes académicos, quiénes se benefician y de qué manera, qué uso estamos haciendo de las herramientas que la red global nos proporciona.
Gracias por leer, y feliz día del libre acceso a la información.
Un gran saludo,
Marcela
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