[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]
WSN: administuff
Less than two months ago Water Science Network was publicly announced for the
first time. Since that time the number of subscribers increased by 35200% and
reached 352. Number of countries they represent increased by 3100%. Average
number of messages per day increased by two million percent (estimate). With
such rate of growth it is easy to establish one of those monstrous media
empires, which would successfully compete with Reuter. But since democracy
proved to be a better form of organization of society than any kind of empire
it may be beneficial to try the democracy first. To be successful the democracy
requires a solid scientific background. In order to explain the phenomenon and
to predict the consequences of WSN tremendous growth a thorough statistical
analysis has been performed. Figure 1 shows dynamics of the number of WSN
subscribers (uppercase W) for February and March 1994 and dynamics of the
world population (lowercase w) for the same period. Simple extrapolation
clearly indicates that by Friday, July 24, 1998 two curves in Figure 1 will
intersect, and then the world will face unprecedented shortage of water
scientists.
|
10^9 |wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
|
~
~
|
10^3 |
| WWWW
| WWWWW
10^2 | WWWWWW
| WWWWWWWW
| WWWWWW
10^1 | WWWWWWWWW
| WWWWWWW
| WWWWWW
10^0 |WWWW
|_________________________________________________________
F E B R U A R Y ' 94 M A R C H ' 94
Figure 1. Comparative dynamics of world population(w) and WSN membership(W).
These alarming results demonstrate that the manpower potential for the
advancements in this field is almost exhausted. The only hope for the
continuing progress in mastering the everlasting puzzles of water is in
improving the quality of research by enhancing the level of communication
between researchers. WSN was created to help to achieve this meritorious
goal. As any democracy, WSN should function accordingly to the collective
will of its members. This means that we are moving toward the first popular
vote. Candidate questions for the ballot are the following:
- should WSN be moderated
- should answers be sent to the authors of questions or be posted to WSN
- do we need archives for computer-generated data on water and solutions
and would somebody deposit her/his data to such archives
- do we need on-line conferences with full text papers and posters placed
in hypermedia network servers and would somebody participate in such
conferences
Suggestions for other questions are welcomed. The vote will take place in
the end of April. A sweepstakes is planned for the participants in the vote.
The prize is two round-trip tickets to one of the famous water resorts.
In anticipation that WSN will soon become the best WSN in the world,
Iosif Vaisman,
Water Distributor Extraordinaire
(self-appointed)
First Day of April, Year One Thousand Nine Hundred Ninety Four
p.s. Not all the information in the above text is directly related to the
date when it was written. iv