Some years ago, late '04 I think, I wrote to some friends(almost all of whom have their advanced degree by now) about an intellectual work model that is without identity and monetary reward (but not without individualism nor identity). I admit that it's kind of childish, but it goes something like this: (and I apologize to my own blog if I've already posted this before)
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- Researchers are given secure and secret access to a research forum under uninformative pseudonyms.
- Each person may be allowed to have more than one identity, but they cannot change the name once it is established.
- They discuss/produce with each other under pseudonym.
- They will share ideas, data, analysis, and perform simultaneous and instantaneous peer review--but entirely anonymous.
- Posts are read-only. Corrections can be posted, but original public posts are kept immutable.
- In order to guarantee anonymity, one approach is to use trusted reviewers (voted by democratically based on past behavior). These trusted reviewers will receive all discussions and summarize into either notes, or short write ups.
- All significant participants to a piece of research(poster, scripts, paper, book, code, algorithm, ASCII art, etc., etc.) are listed as an author/owner(using pseudonym).
- Reputation is established purely based on collective recognition of past timely contribution and clarity of explanation. External reputation is also established by external recognition--see later point on that.
- The ultimate empirical approach by blinding participants to irrelevant aspects such as: race, sex, height, age, language, geographic location, time zones, financial status, government backing, religion, left/right handedness, balding or not, eye color, B.O. hidden agendas (so optimizes intellectual output without regard to the underlying motivation because past experience indicate some of best research come out of very racist and very evil scientist--thus the "mad scientist" cartoon caracture)
- This intellectual work organization can participate in the larger scientific community by submitting work (with pseudonym affiliated with this organization) to established venues.
- Larger work can be published as books but following conventional publication review, editorial and approval process. Money goes toward the organization for future research.
- Patents belong to the organization and the anonymous authors. It's licensing is managed by authors who will come to agreement via small amount of private discussion and public declaration of decision.
- Some small number of public servants must be delegated to implement outward facing aspects of the operation.
Criticism 0: It looks like I thought of this while failing out of graduate school... Couldn't quite compete in reality, so tried to make up a virtual world where I might have a chance.
Criticism 1: Try to think of an antagonistic environment that this was trying to overcome. The anonymous authors could come up with some kind of code to communicate with empathetic reviewer, (or if possible, through non-empathetic reviewer) in order to gang up on somebody that they don't like. So, ..., if you piss some people off, they can still kick you out.
Criticism 2: It's hard to guarantee responsible posting. What if somebody fakes data?
Criticism 3: They can always hack the computer and find out who's who in real life and dis you in person. There is probably no escaping reality... Sadly, digital security is not trustworthy enough yet for this to
Criticism 4: Sciences as they are is already very political. It is probably not possible to hide who the actual researcher is because of his research approaches.
Criticism 5: Allows for research motivated, (possibly entirely), by evil motivations.
Criticism 6: Ignores a most fundamental aspects of modern research: money; nobody will give money to such an organization, and without money, this is effectively without merit.
Criticism 7: Without monetary return, nobody would participate and contribute money making content.
Criticism 8: Who will be it's public officers? There is no single person who is trust worthy to all.
Criticisim 9: The organization's relationship to the real world is not addressed sufficiently. What if it breaks a law?...
Criticism 10: How to handle ownership of, say, a professor's work who has obligation to his university, or scientist's work to his company?
Criticism 11: Hasn't been thought through carefully in terms of how it works, what it does (who decides topic? can it even be productive without any legal or social restrictions?) , and how it works with existing research/intellectual world.
Criticism 12: What's the difference between intellectual work and artistic work?
Criticism 13: More trouble than it's worth. Might as well admit that the world sucks and live with it... When people find out that they can't take advantage of other people, they will not participate.
