The general answer is Yes to the main question.

The general answer is also Yes to 'Do you think therefore, the world is a better and safer place today?'

But on the local scene we have to work hard to eradicate crime, tensions, injustice, and to actively build peace and collaboration...

The general answer is Yes to the main question.

The general answer is also Yes to 'Do you think therefore, the world is a better and safer place today?'

But on the local scene we have to work hard to eradicate crime, tensions, injustice, and to actively build peace and collaboration...

Not Necessarily .

Friends, I found this link. I quote:

'A better education in science for your child can also mean better things for society by helping students develop into more responsible citizens who help to build a strong economy, contribute to a healthier environment, and bring about a brighter future for everyone.'

http://www.tryscience.org/parents/wsm_3.html

The question about “the more humane society” and “better”, these are question which nobody can answer with certainty. However the “information society” faces a serious problem: We have accumulate a huge amount of knowledge, which is mostly incomprehensible (See the Ulam’s paradox: we have some millions of new theorems, which a small part of this is comprehensible to a very small group of mathematicians!). Thus we need a way to synthesise this amount of knowledge, through some technology and give back to humanity a comprehensible starting point, for a new approach to science!

One of these ways of unification is “Networked Science”. Let me copy from the book “REINVENTING

DISCOVERY: The New Era of Networked Science, by Michael Nielsen, the Gowers Experiment:

 ”

“Tim Gowers is not your typical blogger. A mathematician at Cambridge University, Gowers is a recipient of the highest honor in mathematics, the Fields Medal, often called the Nobel Prize of mathematics. His blog radiates mathematical ideas and insight.

In January 2009, Gowers decided to use his blog to run a very unusual social experiment. He picked out an important and difficult unsolved mathematical problem, a problem he said he’d “love to solve.” But instead of attacking the problem on his own, or with a few close colleagues, ”

“he decided to attack the problem completely in the open, using his blog to post ideas and partial progress. What’s more, he issued an open invitation asking other people to help out. Anyone could follow along and, if they had an idea, explain it in the comments section of the blog. Gowers hoped that many minds would be more powerful than one, that they would stimulate each other with different expertise and perspectives, and collectively make easy work of his hard mathematical problem. He dubbed the experiment the Polymath Project.

The Polymath Project got off to a slow start. Seven hours after Gowers opened up his blog for mathematical discussion, not a single person had commented. Then a mathematician named Jozsef Solymosi from the University of British Columbia posted a comment suggesting a variation on Gowers’s problem, a variation which was easier, but which Solymosi thought might throw light on the original problem. Fifteen minutes later, an Arizona high-school teacher named Jason Dyer chimed in with a thought of his own. And just three minutes after that, UCLA mathematician Terence Tao—like Gowers, a Fields medalist—added a comment. The comments erupted: over the next 37 days, 27[…]” “car.” Just 37 days after the project began Gowers announced that he was confident the polymaths had solved not just his original problem, but a harder problem that included the original as a special case. He described it as “one of the most exciting six weeks of my mathematical life.” Months’ more cleanup work remained to be done, but the core mathematical problem had been solved. (If you’d like to know the details of Gowers’s problem, they’re described in the appendix. If you just want to get on with reading this book, you can safely skip those details.)

The polymaths aren’t standing still. Since Gowers’s original project, nearly a dozen Polymath and Polymath-like projects have been launched, some attacking problems even more ambitious than Gowers’s original problem. More than 100 mathematicians and other scientists have participated; mass collaboration is starting to spread through mathematics. Like the first Polymath Project, several of these projects have been great successes, really driving our understanding of mathematics forward. Others have been more qualified successes, falling short of achieving their (sometimes extremely ambitious) goals. Regardless, massively collaborative mathematics is a powerful new way of attacking hard mathematical problems.

Why is mass online collaboration[…]”

“to scale up creative conversation, so connections that would ordinarily require fortuitous serendipity instead happen as a matter of course. This speeds up the problem-solving process, and expands the range of problems that can be solved by the human mind.

The Polymath Project is a small part of a much bigger story, a story about how online tools are transforming the way scientists make discoveries. These tools are cognitive tools, actively amplifying our collective intelligence, making us smarter and so better able to solve the toughest scientific problems. To understand why all this matters, think back to the seventeenth century and the early days of modern science, the time of great discoveries such as Galileo’s observation of the moons of Jupiter, and Newton’s formulation of his laws of gravitation. The greatest legacy of Galileo, Newton, and their contemporaries wasn’t those one-off breakthroughs. It was the method of scientific discovery itself, a way of understanding how nature works. At the beginning of the seventeenth century extraordinary genius was required to make even the tiniest of scientific advances. By developing the method of scientific discovery, early scientists ensured that by the end of the seventeenth century such scientific advances[…]”

“believe that the process of science—how discoveries are made—will change more in the next twenty years than it has in the past 300 years.

The Polymath Project illustrates just a single aspect of this change, a shift in how scientists work together to create knowledge. A second aspect of this change is a dramatic expansion in scientists’ ability to find meaning in knowledge. Consider, for example, the studies you often see reported in the news saying “so-and-so genes cause such-and-such a disease.” What makes these studies possible is a genetic map of human beings that’s been assembled over the past twenty years. The best-known part of that map is the human genome, which scientists completed in 2003. Less well known, but perhaps even more important, is the HapMap (short for haplotype map), completed in 2007, which charts how and where different human beings can differ in their genetic code. Those genetic variations determine much about our different susceptibilities to disease, and the HapMap says where those variations can occur—it’s a genetic map not just of a single human being, but of the entire human race.

Another interesting book is: [Ted_G._Lewis]_Network_Science_-_Theory_and_Applications.

Finally I believe that promoting science might be helpful for humanity.

Costas,

Indeed, collaboration of minds is more enabler to see the identified problem from different perspectives and varying expertise and thereby yield a possible breakthrough to the sought solution of the problem. Three important events can be sighted in this regard:

(1) The creation of the atomic bomb of WWII from the Manhattan project applying Einstein’s equation, E = mc^2. Although Einstein supported the idea initially, but during a debate he doubted the practicality of it and he even mocked about it. But a friend of him from Hungary named Leo Szilard, a physicist, encouraged and in fact debated Einstein the possibility of it through fission using uranium and Einstein replied “ I never thought of that “. Finally the established scientific group to create atomic bomb succeeded in creating it – a team work of minds for a result but of a devastating effect for humanity which Einstein later regretted writing such a letter to Roosevelt in the first place.

(2) The proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem by Andrew Wiles. Although Fermat said on the margin of his paper that the proof was easy, but has never been easy at all for mathematicians of the field. Several mathematical theories developed because of that. But to come to the point, Andrew Wiles was on it for quite a while, tried several times and claimed proven it but still unsuccessful. One day he was discussing about it with a friend and the friend indicated to him that results of Goro Shimura and Yutaka Taniyama are important lines of attack for that particular problem. He then went to his office and thought about that for long and finally found a hint from their discussions and solved the long standing celebrated unsolved problems of mathematics – results of group work and collaboration.

(3) The proof of the existence of what is called the Higgs Boson or journalists called it “ God particle” is one of the widely celebrated group research work of physicists of this century from across the globe, in a physics laboratory called CERN in Geneva. Just to say it exists, they have to unanimously believe the result and say it yes.

Therefore global collaborations in exchange of knowledge and expertise are more enablers to solve problems of science and society.

Yes and No. Mostly, the spread of scientific wisdom, technology and the internet across the globe usually makes the human society better and more humane than before.

The growth and wide spread of science and technology along with the internet boom has shortened the distance and bridged the people across the globe to make the society better. One good example is through RG we are interacting and contributing to the global benefit.... what we discuss is wide open to the public and everyone gets a share of information which otherwise is literally known to only who seek to search and find...The GLOBAL ONENESS and commonality is possible only through these miraculous inventions and the innovations that follow through this INTERNET ERA...

Here is a fine article "Will The Internet Change Humanity?", followed by nice discussion of many experts! Here are the concluding remarks: "The Internet, like most new technologies, brings us a set of conflicts. The benefits are obvious: there's personal choice and empowerment, unlimited information at the speed of light, and the breaking of boundaries of every kind. But the Internet also threatens to fragment society, isolate communities, depersonalize relationships, distort intimacy, erode privacy, and sacrifice reflection to an addiction to speed. Yet such change is only the beginning. The Internet is not a something, it is virtually an everything; and therein lies a deeper, more fundamental issue. The Internet entails such a profound change for human beings that we who embrace it may be setting in motion a new kind of evolution, literally transforming humanity into a new kind of species. Maybe that's science fiction. Or maybe that's closer to truth."

http://season1.closertotruth.com/topics/technologysociety/102/102transcript.html

Dear Professor Dejenie A. Lakew,

In my opinion IT provides benefits to all but in layers. The layers of community with different economical groups are using the technologies from levels of enjoyments to levels of necessities.   

The drawback to this looks like that the a portion of humanity may feel the technology has forced them for its acquirement.

The web gives kids never before seen access to information. From wikipedia to online books, from online education to you tube how to manuals, kids can now find the answer to more questions than their parents or teachers could ever know. Others point out that with all that information comes video games, advertising and child centered marketing which is undermining parent's ability to instill wisdom and values on to the next generation.

http://www.ted.com/conversations/5322/is_technology_actually_good_fo.html

There are some very positive things about technology. There is a promise for a better more human society. Presently our society is already inhuman. Paths to Paradise (1985 - Galilée, 1983) by André Gorz, express a positive feeling towards the role of technology in the future. see, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Gorz

Misuse of technology is the danger that lurks humanity!