To the Reader

…reads the title of the famous poem by Baudelaire, angry, cynical, and depressive. Hence, that may not be the right way to welcome you, dear reader. How and whom shall we welcome in a blog? This new type of IT-based medium creates a new type of “counterpart” as well: the reader-writer or writer-reader. So, let me warmly welcome you again, writer-reader and seduce you to participate.

You will create a “typewritten” discourse, which at earlier times had been printed, enveloped, postmarked and sent, usually to one person only. A blog instead, addresses numerous readers and expects – qualified – comments. Not that a blog post will always get any, not that they are always qualified, but a blog bears the possibility of starting an immediate discussion among a – for the time being – unknown number of participants.

The author of the contribution to the blog, the writer, will eventually comment on the comments or answer questions or clarify opaque terms. The reader, who comments or questions will adopt the role of a writer and so forth. This ambiguous game of explanation and justification, attack and defense, answer and response seems to make the new medium “BLOG” an ideal tool to spread opinions, criticism, musings, feelings, scrutiny and observations in science to an audience, an IT-literate one of course.

What are our intentions, our aims and expectations?

We want to get in touch with the public in the widest sense, both with the scientific laypersons and our colleagues to raise awareness for scientific perspectives of our contemporary world. The members of the Swiss Science and Innovation Council want to present their perspectives as experts, each one as an expert in his or her field, together as members of an independent advisory body to the government, and we want to present them in our own words.

The opinions expressed in this blog may not be unbiased, but they would be certainly unfiltered, un-beautified, and not re-positioned or re-focused by numerous reviewers, peers, editors, and lobbyists. They would certainly not come in the disciplinary jargon, which is understood by the inaugurated only.

The aim is to get you all more interested in the scientific aspects of our life, to confront you with its uncertainties, to share deep insights of how the world is modeled by contemporary science, and where facts lie, unquestioned. It goes without saying that we expect politicians, policy shapers and decision makers, and our colleagues in whatever responsibility they are, among our prime readers.

It will be our prime challenge to establish this blog as a reliable source of information for both, the layman and the expert, but it is not a minor challenge to keep it alive. There are two ways to achieve this goal: Focus on novelties will raise the visitor’s frequency, but focus on carefully thought over comments will make us a reliable source of information. As usual it would be wise to stick to the principle „doing one thing without abandoning the other“.

Let’s give it a try and stay with the principle of Kaizen, the continual improvement…