I coined the phrase “manufactured serendipity” years ago to suggest that serendipity is, in fact, too important to leave to chance.

We can’t actually cause serendipity to happen, but we can absolutely create environments that make it a lot more likely.

Michael, one of the regrettable ironies of the Manhattan Project is that its science is now (almost) completely open, yet its organizational history remains classified.

For example, a key document is the February 1945 memorandum from project engineer Willam “Deak” Parsons titled “‘Homestretch’ Measures”. This document has never been declassified (although the correspondence leading up to it is open).

This is regrettable, as many of the organizational principles that were conceived during the Manhattan Project are proving—in the long run—to be subtler, and have broader and farther-reaching effects, even than the weapons themselves.

This is *not* to hold up the Manhattan Project as a laudable exemplar. The point is the opposite—some of these mistakes we should not make twice.

but i think what could be very usefull is a open source based system , that could-
1. be used in varied areas
2. be improved , because current systems do need improvements

In regard to your other comments, about some people not being well suited to working in the open, I completely agree. Some difficulties will be obviated in the near future, by better tools, but others are more intrinsic. I’m particularly fascinated by the problem of the creative individual who really needs their space. For largely routine problems, I suspect they’ll simply be outcompeted by others taking a more open appraoch. If they are working on a big nonroutine problem, though, that may not be so true. Grothendieck has a wonderful quote about the importance of solitude in doing the best work. But I can’t find it online right now, and I’ve got to run…

- fear that disclosure of research-related questions will lead to scooping. This reduces the number of questions that are asked.

- poor community design. It’s telling that the discussion on many scientific blogs is significantly more vibrant than in many journal forums. In a healthy open source forum the discussion can be at another level still. There’s enormous differences, though, in how those three types of communities are built, and I don’t think it’s so a priori surprising that two succeed, and the other hasn’t, yet.