There is something inexplicably American in our celebration of the individual. We honor the lone geniuses, the innovators, the Einsteins and Fords, who seemingly alter the current of culture through a single stroke of scientific or technological insight. Despite our mythology, progress in science and technology is a process of knowledge accretion over time-an inherently communal endeavor.
Researchers publish and debate.
They exchange ideas through human networks that spring up among people with shared interests. They borrow, challenge, and build on the work of their predecessors. Today the pace of change is too fast, the problems too large for our nation to wait for time and chance to spread the seeds of an idea. For America to remain strong and competitive, for its industries, communities, and schools to reap the benefits of advances in science and technology, the nation needs a means to rapidly harvest new ideas and spread them among disciplines so that they can ferment into new technologies, new products, new markets. To enhance this vital process of knowledge creation and dissemination, the Alliance envisions a new infrastructure, a network of technologies designed to encourage collaboration.