Today, with the internet and smartphones, science is in flux again. Millions of people, each with their own occupation (and many too young to have an occupation yet), share their observations and help process data. Volunteers work online to transcribe thousands of old letters, some originating with Darwin, others from Shakespeare, and others from war diaries. People are needed to turn handwriting into digital text because automation with optical recognition so ware can't decipher handwriting as well as the human eye. 

Fields like biochemistry advance because people use their free time as players in online games because the human mind is better at spatial reasoning than computers. In the Eterna game, players design RNA, the blueprints that make proteins. In Foldit, a game to solve puzzles of how proteins fold, some players discovered the folded shape of a particular protein associated with aids in monkeys. 

As environmental and health sensors like Fitbits and air-quality monitors become lower cost, people without science credentials are assessing the quality of their environment, providing a check on industries to make sure regulations are followed. In ports like Oakland, California, with significant truck traffic, and in New Orleans, Louisiana, with petrochemical refineries, communities organized by the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project and Louisiana Bucket Brigade have discovered excessive exposures to pollution where scientists and regulatory enforcers have failed to look. 

Across the world, eyes of citizen scientists have discovered that endangered monk seals were attempting to recolonize the Mediterranean Sea, that invasive ladybirds in England were rapidly expanding their range, and three new species of dancing peacock spiders in Australia. 

Looking across history, what's revealed is that in many areas of study the only way to keep advancing the frontiers is for scientists to collaborate, not just with each other, but with everyone.