Science 2.0

Last Tuesday (October 23, 2008), I attended a talk by Don Hutcheson, CEO of VLSI Research Inc., which is hosted by Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law in LBJ Library of University of Texas at Austin. Hutcheson, and his small but effective company VLSI serves as a big database for semiconductor industry. The title of the talk was "Science 2.0: Globalized Innovation in Electronics".

Science 2.0 is about applying principles of Web 2.0 to scientific research. Having presented transistors to public use and henceforth made the Internet available to world's rapidly globalizing communication and sharing needs, apparently semiconductor industry itself does not utilize it for its own benefit by the means of research and innovation as much as expected. Especially, research conducted in corporate labs have a very highly probable chance of staying in corporate's library shelves for years and nobody would hear of it for ages. As Web 2.0 applications are all about interaction, Science 2.0 model enables people share their research, innovations through web. Those days are not very far that people will work from their home using communication tools (video conferences, phone conferences, Internet, etc.) via sharing virtual offices.

The future of semiconductor industry lies in research and innovation. Sharing information, interaction of minds and collaboration will bring high quality and effective solutions. You can see Don Hutcheson's efforts in Science 2.0 at weSRCH.com.

It was not really clear to me how Science 2.0 reflects on manufacturing other than design but Hutcheson said he was going to give a talk on this subject in another conference soon. I am looking forward to learning about it afterwards.