[Taxacom] progress on globalnames.org: a political and development perspective

Sat May 16 11:54:08 CDT 2009

Here another twist to the decade: Is biodiversity missing out again in the
current closing of the digital divide?

There are two relevant articles to this issue: one in BBC-online
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8034412.stm) that states 
" How ridiculous then that over the last three months, climate change has
had 1,382 mentions in British national newspapers.

Yet, during the same period, biodiversity was mentioned just 115 times."

The second one in Tagesanzeiger
(http://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/ausland/naher-osten-und-afrika/Gibt-es-in-Afrik
a-bald-ein-Silicon-Valley/story/28095436) , a Swiss newspaper asking the
question "Gibt es in Afrika bald ein Silicon Valley" and " Jetzt brauchen
Schulen in Timbuktu statt ganzer Bibliotheken nur noch ein paar
Secondhand-Computer, um den Lernenden Zugang zum gesammelten Wissen der Welt
zu verschaffen."

This refers to Jeff Sachs and his conclusions (see eg
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/21/digitalmedia.mobilephone
s?gusrc=rss&feed=education) that the digital divide is now closing to the
very great advantage of the developing world.

"Moreover, market penetration in poor countries is rising sharply. India has
around 300 million subscribers, with subscriptions rising by a stunning
eight million or more per month. Brazil now has more than 130 million
subscribers, and Indonesia was estimated to reach 120 million. In Africa,
which contains the world's poorest countries, the market is soaring, with
more than 280 million subscribers."

So, we talk about getting a list of names up in the next decade or so,
whilst the world around us wants content, such as publications, images,
specimen and related data as starting point to find out, what is known about
a species, which is a pest species, etc.

There is no discussion that each name should be linked to at least one
reference specimen with a state of the domain documentation attached to it.
It is clear, that creating visual documentation is not anymore a stumbling
block, but it seems rather our vision to take this chance.

There is very little discussion that only names should be published unless
the related information is online accessible (eg through Zoobank) thus not
only delivering what the world wants from us (good for us, that we have such
a huge user base that we do not need to build up) but will save us a huge
amount of work to retrofit data.

We had a great chance in 1992, but our communities and our leaders didn't
had a vision to create this global system but rather continued go build on
our minuscule fiefdoms.

We should not let slip what Jeff Sachs observes and end up with a dismal
little attention mentioned by Gardiner in the next decade.

-----Original Message-----
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
[mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of David Patterson
Sent: Thursday, May 14, 2009 1:26 AM
To: 'Jim Croft'
Cc: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] progress on globalnames.org

The reason for suggesting a decade or so is not because of technological
constraints. The architecture and tools are being assembled today.  Agencies
such as GBIF, EOL, nomenclators and the like can and do invest in a semantic
names architecture, and through a variety of workshops dozens of skilled
bio-informaticians have contributed their wisdom and enthusiasm.

Rather, the rate of progress to achieving a comprehensive, authoritative,
and effective names architecture is all about political will, and the social
challenges of engaging all of the key players rather than having to reinvent
wheels, and the relocation of resources to finance the transformation.  

There is no difficulty to embed, say, the names of Australia's biota within
this architecture within much less than two years, and for a very small
fraction of the $30M.  The challenge is extend this to the full spectrum of
our needs inclusive of the quality and authority we seek.

I would rather not defend the decadal statement, but my experiences over the
last 9 years suggest that this is realistic.  If we can mobilize enthusiasm,
resources to achieve a comprehensive names architecture within the next few
years, I for one would be delighted - because then we can get back to the
real biology.

Paddy

-----Original Message-----
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
[mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Jim Croft
Sent: Wednesday, May 13, 2009 10:17 AM
To: Roderic Page
Cc: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] progress on globalnames.org

Yesterday $30million was flagged in the Australian budget to enhance
the Atlas of Living Australia, over two (!) years.  I  would be very
surprised indeed if a major push on a list of known taxa and their
names and associated information is not going to be a major part of
this.

Decadal time scales are no really going to cut it with governments who
need something to show within a single electoral cycle.

Two years is totally scary and we are definitely going to have to look
at alternative approaches to sourcing, evaluating and capturing the
data.

jim

On Wed, May 13, 2009 at 5:04 PM, Roderic Page <r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk> wrote:
> Am I the only horrified by this timescale?
>
> On 12 May 2009, at 16:45, David Patterson wrote:
>
>>
>> Expectation management:  How long before this all operational? Best
>> to think
>> decadally.
>>
>
> Why can't we have this sooner? Like, *cough*, now? Is it crazy to
> suggest that if all these names were dumped in a wiki, together with
> annotations (e.g., links to literature), any our community set about
> adding/annotating/cleaning, we could have this done rather sooner...?
>
> Rod
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------
> Roderic Page
> Professor of Taxonomy
> DEEB, FBLS
> Graham Kerr Building
> University of Glasgow
> Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK
>
> Email: r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk
> Tel: +44 141 330 4778
> Fax: +44 141 330 2792
> AIM: rodpage1962 at aim.com
> Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1112517192
> Twitter: http://twitter.com/rdmpage
> Blog: http://iphylo.blogspot.com
> Home page: http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/rod.html
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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-- 
_________________
Jim Croft ~ jim.croft at gmail.com ~ +61-2-62509499 ~
http://www.google.com/profiles/jim.croft

"Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality."
- Joseph Conrad, author (1857-1924)

"I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said,
but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant."
 - attributed to Robert McCloskey, US State Department spokesman

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