Dreaming, Thinking: Communicating With Light

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In academic research, we don’t dream enough. Increasingly, research is becoming a machine. You do some work, you get results, and you publish them. You sit back and watch for citations, and then you continue on. But, we perhaps miss out on two important things in research … thinking and dreaming.

First, though, we need … a problem. It may be a known problem, and, if it is, others will probably be working on it. But it may be a problem that no one really knows about, but it will be a problem once people see it.

Now, let the magic begin.

Thinking and dreaming

Thinking is freeing your mind and concentrating on the problem. Thinking is all part of setting aside some time away from exam marking, administration, and all the other things that distract us. Unfortunately, there’s no workload allocation model that will pencil in time for thinking, but it is probably one of the most important things that a researcher can do. Along with this, too, is properly reading research papers. Unfortunately, many researchers lose these basic skills once they complete their PhD. The research work can then get a little superficial — on the surface it seems that the person is an expert but gain their expertise on the…