The Long Tail of Curiosity
The process of discovery is being reshaped by the economics and ambitions of the digital age. We know how this story unfolds.
Great ideas have strange characteristics. They’re elusive, but seem obvious after they’re shared. They’re challenging, but then simple once they’re understood. They’re rare, and end up having long shelf lives. Great ideas are the foundation for further understanding.
Chris Anderson’s Long Tail was a great idea. Anderson first articulated the concept in a WIRED article in 2004 and later expanded it into a book of the same name in 2006. The idea was simple: the internet had changed the underlying economics of commerce in a wholly surprising way. The costs of digital production and distribution had been dramatically reduced and the barriers to entry were almost non-existant. The result was an explosion of options for customers and consumers, as well as a dynamic opportunity for brave entrepreneurs who wanted to capitalize on the new reality. It changed everything. It was, in Anderson’s words, “not just a quantitative change, but a qualitative one, too.”
The idea was revelatory. It was the business book that defined the era, explaining how Amazon, Apple, and other internet giants were reshaping the economy by redrawing the boundaries. The concept continues to be useful, too. Not only has it been bolstered by better examples that have come along since its publication, like YouTube and the App Store, but it’s also become a framework for thinking about how the digital universe is affecting fields outside of retail commerce. Looking at journalism, the Long Tail helps us understand how Twitter and blogs relate to more established publications like the New York Times or CNN. Anderson himself has used the idea to explain the effects of digital fabrication and the maker movement in creating the “Long Tail of Stuff.”
Science was one of the last holdouts to this digital revolution. Until now, the process of discovery had done a good job of keeping the walls up around the ivory towers. The journals and publications remained expensive. The conferences and university positions remained exclusive. And, most importantly, grant funding remained limited, with competition fiercer than ever.
That reality is breaking down. The push for open access, the involvement of ever-more citizen scientists, and increasing access to fast-improving tools are opening up the Long Tail of Curiosity. The unit costs of asking interesting questions, and then sharing those results with the wider world, have been drastically reduced. New discoveries can come from anyone, and from anywhere.
I’m hesitant to call this development “science.” For good reason, we have a strict definition of what science means: hypothesis driven, peer-reviewed and reproducible. Not all of this new question-asking clears that bar, but that doesn’t mean it’s not important or interesting. Most of the cat videos on YouTube wouldn’t be classified as “films,” but when added together they create a trend that can’t be ignored.
One of Anderson’s most important realizations was that the Long Tail doesn’t kill the blockbuster. The models and economics of the biggest movies, songs and publications remain largely the same. They’re still enormously popular. The Long Tail doesn’t create an either/or situation, simply more. The Hollywood machine is no longer the only way that films find an audience. There are hundreds of new ways to make it as a filmmaker or musician. That is unfolding with science right now: entirely new ways of conducting and sharing research.
Looking to the future, these trends in science will follow a similar trajectory to what we’ve seen with music and movies. Blockbusters won’t end. Tenure track professors at Harvard will notice it happening, but their working lives — NSF grants, cheap labor from grad students, publishing in Nature and Science — will largely remain the same. New discoveries and insights will come from completely unexpected places: amateurs, networks of online collaborations, or researchers in the developing world. We’ll see more platforms that elevate this type of non-traditional research. Those caught in the middle of these two words will feel squeezed (as evidenced by the growing Postdocalypse), and more will seek out their fame and fortune in the Long Tail of Curiosity.
