Distributed Thinking

I've been asked about the University's Research Data Initiative and what effect it will have on the work of Applications Division. I'm not actually involved with the initiative but I do know some of the background, so in this post I will attempt to explain briefly what research data is about in general and why it is important, then give a few links about the University's initiative. The root of all this is the computers and networking are introducing new ways for to academics to undertake and share their research.   Sensors, microscopes, telescopes, particle accelerators, satellites, social media, audio and video can all produce vast amounts of data that can be of interest to researchers. We can store, search and analyse petabytes of data, and make data available for others to share. For example, astronomers are collecting "sky surveys" - images of the entire sky, in various wavelengths (radio, Xray, visual, infra-red, ...), matching the objects between ...