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The Most Valuable Lesson

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Regardless of whether the Proceedings are functionally useful in a year or a century from now, the process of its creation and development has been a tremendously valuable experience. At a time in the history of communications when technology is having a real-time impact on how people express themselves, we have had an opportunity to examine in detail the practical issues behind digital publishing and integrated network environments.
The Organic Mathematics Project (OMP) was directed towards the exploration of the emerging network and information technologies within the context of mathematics. Numerous groups around the world are engaged in enhancing the specific aspects of the information highway and its associated processes for transporting data. However relatively few are actively integrating and adapting the raw technological building blocks to suit particular fields of endeavour such as Mathematics. In our case, we incorporated several different mechanisms into a single coherent environment which supports the contributions and interactions between mathematics researchers inclined towards experimental mathematics.

Many things which seemed self-evident theoretically became problematical in application. Issues related to copyright which had been carefully avoided in advance came back to hold up publication. The limitations of the software necessitated taking some shortcuts (or even dropping whole concepts). The requests of the authors, who couldn't know clearly what was possible and what was not, often drove development in unexpected directions. Issues of compatibility severely limited the graphic potential of presentation. And of course time was limited.

What was left after all was done was a much clearer sense of what was possible. And what will be possible in the near future. Not suprisingly, the hype surrounding the Internet and the World Wide Web is intense. But there is little evidence to support the conjecture and the speculation about what it really is and what it is good/bad for. Especially with regard to very important issues surrounding publishing, education, scientific communication and virtual research environments. Our experience with these Proceedings has provided valuable feedback for subsequent steps toward an effective integrated on-line environment.



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