Background
I have for years had a strong interest in open source software and open development processes. As my involvement with this grew, I started to believe that the marine technology institute I earlier was a part of at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), could move it's science a long step forward if open processes and meeting places on the internet were taken into use.
Art and ship design
With the exhibition Fishbowlship I have tried to analyse design processes through art. The method has been to move what I learned about ship design at at the university into new rooms. The result is nine pictures made specially for this exhibition.
Fishbowlship
Everything on the internet is visible for everybody and from all directions. The internet may thus be seen as a fishbowl. Everything that goes into the fishbowl is also visible from all directions. Fishbowlship is thus about moving the entire environment for ship design, and also off-shore constructions design, out on the web.
Motivation
Sharing of knowledge has a moral and a technical aspect. The moral one is obvious, but the curious reader may explore it further here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software The technical one I will try to describe:
If you move the development processes of a science into open spaces where everybody and anyone can contribute, the number of potential test users and developers grows substantially. The operative system Linux is continuously being developed this way, and there are quite a few who think Linux is far better than Windows. The term "fishbowl" used in connection with software development is gathered from zope.org. More can be read about it here: http://www.zope.org/DevHome/Fishbowl/index.html/Introduction.html
Implementation
To establish an open meeting space and a development arena you need a hosting solution and a set of principles that can guide the arrangement of entities of knowledge, methods and tools that are elements in ship design. This type of knowledge management is already a research field, for instance at the Institute of Marine Systems Design at NTNU in Trondheim, Norway, through the Ship 4C-program: http://www.ntnu.no/imt/ms/ship4c But when it comes to establishing some kind of internet based sandbox for ship design, I am not aware of that it has been done. The closest I have found is the more or less stone aged web page : http://www.ivt.ntnu.no/imt/systemer/svartebok/
Theory
Engineering science is about delimiting, modelling and solving a problem. There are many theories about modular design platforms. One theory that may be relevant in a possible internet based sandbox for ship design, is found in Nam P. Suh's book, Principles of Design, Oxford University Press, 1990. A couple of axioms are presented her: Axiom 1: Maintain the independence of functional requirements. Axiom 2: Minimize the information content of the design.
A more pragmatical design philosophy and the use of a type definition system is presented here: http://plone.org/products/dexterity
Fishbowlship and MTS
MTS in Trondheim is one of the largest and most advanced marine technology research environments in the world. Every year approximately 100 master students receive their degrees there. These students may constitute a continuous flow of developers and test users. MTS is therefore well suited to host a web based open sourced sandbox for ship design.
Today scientific knowledge is shared in conferences and through papers in scientific journals. Thus I do not say that knowledge is not shared within academia and the research environment. But this way to do it is archaic. The modern thing today is to use the possibilities that internet provides.
The challenge
Where lies the challenge in this? I think it is to get started. It is easy to believe that you have to study this for years before any piece of ship design knowledge is put on the web. Personally I am fond of the Nike slogan "Just do it!" and to follow the principles of extreme programming: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_programming A possible starting point is to just set up a wiki.
In hoc signo vinces
