Electronic publishing (fwd)

[James H. Beach]

On Mon, 11 Mar 1996, Gregory Zolnerowich wrote:

> Yes, the technology does move fast. Just think about the Dead Sea Scrolls.
> 2,000 years old and they were able to be read. Will anyone be able to read
> a web site, CD, etc., in 2,000 years?
>

Most assuredly not! Does anyone know if Herbarium Supply still sells ACID
FREE parchment scroll stock?  And my stone Letraset is wearing down.

It seems to this subscriber (before this thread becomes a casual and
senseless battleground for the luddites versus the technologists) that
there are many issues surrounding electronic publication that could be
fruitfully discussed here, one of which is the archival function.
Dissemination, cost, technical overhead, social and career credit,
availability of Dead Sea Scroll material from Herbarium Supply being a few
others.

It seems pointless to allude to scripture, ICBN or Judeo-Christian, throw
up our arms say let's wait 'till it all settles out.  It will never settle
out!  Technology will change more quickly every year from now until
eternity.  It will never congeal.  We'll never catch up. The more relevant
perspective is whether taxonomic professional societies, academic criteria
for professional evaluation, and our personal valuation and use of the
electronic infrastructure will take good advantage of the ways in which
technology is changing the way science is done and communicated.

There are hundreds of problems or opportunities to take on in this area.
Let's take some on and move forward.

If you want to limit your formal taxonomic communications to pulp-based
print media, fine!  But the rest of the world is moving on, we'll see ya
later, ahhh, well maybe.

Ask the microbial systematists what they think of the nomenclatural codes
when they algorithmically and quantitatively define (compute) new taxa in
terms of RNA sequences and re-generate their branches of the tree-of-life,
nightly!

What the heck, as long as I'm venting ... Isn't there a fair amount of
phylogenetic systematics going on for which researchers don't bother to
formally publish the names of the computed terminal taxa?  (I honestly
don't know if this is the case or just an impression.)

Are the 'print-constrained nomenclatural systems' keeping up with our
ability to generate (compute) taxa?

Did someone say there was 'bait' around here somewhere?


Jim Beach