President Abdul Kalam of India gave a speech last Sunday to the Indian Intitute of Science (IISc) in Bangalore. The title was, Towards World Knowledge Platform. (Thanks to Subbiah Arunachalam.) Excerpt:
Initially, the mission of World Knowledge Platform is to connect and network the R&D Institutions, Universities and Industries using fiber broadband from the partner nations on selected R&D Missions. The underground fiber cable infrastructure already exists between the many partners. It is only waiting to be lighted up with state-of-the-art optical networks and to ignite the minds of the knowledge workers. This knowledge GRID will support multitude of seamless connections supporting both synchronous and asynchronous communication, carrying either text or audio or video. We can then use this network in the academic environments to teach courses online and share expensive equipments remotely....The components of the vision [for IISc] are:...(f) Be a partner in the World Knowledge Platform to promote world class knowledge creation, knowledge dissemination and knowledge sharing among all partner countries....(i) Create an IISc-Virtual Education Hub - so that the quality education from IISc can reach out to the entire nation. It should also act as a Virtual Collaborative Hub, which will become the platform for the scientists, researchers from IISc, world wide scientists and Nobel laureates to share their knowledge among the students and faculty across India.
Comment. I've only excerpted the parts most relevant to OA above. But the whole speech is worth reading if only to see how an educated President can speak, in case you've forgotten. If you're not from India, try to imagine your head of state speaking these lines. "It is reported that gene differences between humans and most animals are very nominal. More than 90% of our DNA is similar. This property is a boon to researchers since animal models can be subsequently used for curing human diseases based on trial data." "When I think of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, I...[think of] Mr. Richard Feynman...Mr. Eric Drexler...[and] Prof CNR Rao." "The era of wood and bio-mass is almost nearing its end. The age of oil and natural gas would soon be over even within the next few decades. The world energy forum has predicted that fossil based oil, coal and gas reserves will last for another 5 - 10 decades only." "I would like to discuss the latest research in the area of photo-voltaic cells using Carbon nano tubes which can give an efficiency of over 45%, nearly three times the efficiency which the present technology can offer."
Update (7/13/07). The Royal Society awarded President Kalam its King Charles II Medal. The award is limited to heads of state who make extraordinary contributions to the promotion of science. It has only been given once before, in 1998 to Emperor Akihito of Japan.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 2/23/2006 03:37:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
