Co-researching as a driver for technological innovation: Computing and Cultural Heritage

David Arnold

doi:10.18352/lq.10164

Abstract

A recurring question in defining publicly funded research programmes is “what research should be funded publicly and what should be funded through the private sector?”. The way this question is usually answered has placed emphasis on seeking to ensure that research that has a payback in purely economic terms is funded (at least in part) by those most likely to receive the economic benefit, but evaluating “who benefits?” and “how?” is not always easy to deduce from the research questions posed.

Highlights

Computer scientists seek to develop methods that are applicable to classes of problems which inevitably means that solutions invented in one field can be applied to problems that have the similar structure in other fields
Co-researching as a Driver for Technological Innovation summarises this fundamental underpinning of the discipline that remains just as applicable 40 years later
There are inevitable consequences for those who would seek to quantify the beneficiaries of individual pieces of computing research

Summary

Introduction

Computer scientists seek to develop methods that are applicable to classes of problems which inevitably means that solutions invented in one field can be applied to problems that have the similar structure in other fields The recognition of this process of generalisation has been fundamental to the development of computer science as a discipline over the past 70 years. The engineers and scientists undertaking research to inform the understanding of the relationships between the parameters of the system will typically be experimenting with simplifications of the complex systems to isolate and understand the relationships between different elements Such experiments might address material properties in isolation from the particular situation in which those materials are used and use that knowledge to formulate the set of equations that describe the behaviour of a more complex assembly of materials in real objects. Even the evidence of predicting where and for whom payback from research will occur seems inconclusive, with those deciding on whether to invest resources in developing new technologies being wary that they risk losing the investment whilst those that become involved once a technology is better established can benefit from the improvements

Computer Science and the “Toy Problem”

Technological Innovation in the Cultural Heritage Sector

Conclusions