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Working notes on the role of vision papers in basic science

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Many of the papers I most admire are vision papers1. Rather than abstractly define what a vision paper is, here's a list of a few examples of such papers, to convey the gist: There are many more such vision papers; a few are listed in the footnotes2. But hopefully you get the idea. Most vision papers quickly fade into obscurity. But the most successful often play crucial roles in pioneering new fields, including computer science, geoengineering, gravitational wave astronomy, genomics, and many others. (I will resist the urge to more precisely define what is meant by "vision paper". Premature definition is the root of much bad creative work. It seems more useful, at this early point, to explore the broad genre of "things like the above list" – collecting examples of vision papers, trying to understand what they do, and the role they play, differences in approach, differences and similarities to conventional papers. Such detailed work is, of course, the grist out of which good definition

Working notes on the role of vision papers in basic science By Michael Nielsen May 28, 2022 Many of the papers I most admire are vision papers 1 . Rather than abstractly define what a vision paper is, here's a list of a few examples of such papers, to convey the gist: Alan Turing's paper , crucial for modern computer science. Turing also wrote important vision papers on morphogenesis and artificial intelligence; Alan Kay's paper , crucial for modern interactive personal computing; Alexei Kitaev's paper , which founded the field of topological quantum computing; Alexander Rich's paper , on the

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