Session Number

26

Description

In times of fast development, actors in the center of events have a distinctive advantage. Effective participation requires current knowledge of what is going on ("the right information in the right form at the right time"), reliable channels of feedback, and visibility. The idea of a "global village", when introduced in the sociology of communication some decades back, expresses the confidence in modern communications and computing technology to overcome the obstacle of distance and time delays. This, as we all know, is an oversimplification: the complexities of human communication cannot be reduced to signals and processes in cables and computers. Yet, there are areas, for example in well-defined scientific areas with coherent research communities and a "lingua franca", where access to, and dissemination of current information makes global participation possible. It is in this sense that recent developments in information services in High Energy Physics (HEP) make the label of a "global village" justified by covering the entire research community, including groups in the Third World. The solutions found may prove to be relevant to many other areas as a pilot study.

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The Global Village Come True: High-Tech Information Network in High Energy Physics

In times of fast development, actors in the center of events have a distinctive advantage. Effective participation requires current knowledge of what is going on ("the right information in the right form at the right time"), reliable channels of feedback, and visibility. The idea of a "global village", when introduced in the sociology of communication some decades back, expresses the confidence in modern communications and computing technology to overcome the obstacle of distance and time delays. This, as we all know, is an oversimplification: the complexities of human communication cannot be reduced to signals and processes in cables and computers. Yet, there are areas, for example in well-defined scientific areas with coherent research communities and a "lingua franca", where access to, and dissemination of current information makes global participation possible. It is in this sense that recent developments in information services in High Energy Physics (HEP) make the label of a "global village" justified by covering the entire research community, including groups in the Third World. The solutions found may prove to be relevant to many other areas as a pilot study.