Selling Tomorrows

"Hollywood Science" book catalogues movies' influence on scientific beliefs

The table of contents tells 99% of the story. Part I: "Dangers from Nature." Part II: "Dangers from Ourselves." So does Sidney Perkowitz, physics professor at Emory University, begin his tour of science's portrayal in the movies in his book, "Hollywood Science." 

Why is this topic important? Well, as Perkowitz point out, "only about one in 300 Americans is a scientist." So your chances of running into one, as opposed to a Dr. Brackish Okun-like stereotype, are pretty slim. Couple that with the fact that "nearly one-third of American adults believe that astrology and fortune telling are 'very scientific' or 'sort of scientific,'" and we quickly see why movies are doing a better job of framing science than highschools. All of which is to say (and Perkowitz says it best) "When new, little-understood possibilities and threats appear, science fiction films can inform, predict, and warn."

Next up: what Hollywood's depiction of robots and aliens reveals about how we judge our own emotions. 

Uncle Sam Drafts Sci-Fi Writers

Who could have guessed?  According to the Washington Post, "the ranks of federal and commercial R&D departments are stuffed with sci-fi fanatics."  And they've just gotten together for a chat at a conference for Homeland Security Science & Technology to discuss new directions that the government should think in.  Snip:

"Would the space program have flourished so quickly without a generation of engineers and scientists that grew up reading Robert Heinlein?  Has anything been invented that somebody didn't first imagine and put into a story?  'I would now go so far as to claim that only readers or writers of science fiction are really competent to discuss the possibilities of the future,' Arthur C. Clarke wrote in 1962..."

Indeed.  And not to be underestimated is the fact that it's not just the technologies that these authors invented that guided R&D efforts, but the vision of the future that these authors laid out that informed policy-shaping fears and goals.  

Be sure to check out the website of Sigma, the "science fiction think tank," that helped put this meeting together.  Their founder, Arlan Andrews, is an engineer and author of more than 400 works of fiction and non-fiction stories, books and papers. Here's a short selection from Amazon. 

By the way, this picture of President Roosevelt re-imagined as a robot is part of a collection called "Robot Presidents" by an artists named Xadrian. Definitely worth checking out. 

MSNBC's "Robots that Terrify Us" Really about Ancient Fears

On the heels of Terminator 4's release, Winda Benedetti at MSNBC put together a list of 8 robots that foretell the coming "robo-apocalypse. But while the segment is written tongue-in-cheek, what's interesting is how, robot-by-robot, it runs through a list of human fears that exist whether robots do or not:

Being hunted like animals, getting dumped, turning children against us, loss of control, getting attacked by insects of animals that are individually weak, but strong in great numbers, destruction of nature, making war without conscience or being pursued by someone without one, and finally, betrayal. 

Maybe it's not the robots we're frightened of. 

What future Manhattan will REALLY look like

Oh, Manhattan.  Despite the magic of the 1964 World's Fair, Hollywood is convinced its future is doomed to be frozen (Day After Tomorrow), flooded (When Worlds Collide), fried (Independence Day) or just forgotten (Planet of the Apes).  But Mayor Bloomberg today released a 232-page manual that will guide planners on how the city should be re-designed over the next few decades. 

It's worth clicking on this NY Times story which has a big picture at the top that can be moused over to see how a sample street is re-made under the new guidelines.  

Event tomorrow: How artists interpret science

There's a cool panel discussion tomorrow at the Cynthia Reeves Gallery in Manhattan.  It's called "Translating Climate Change," and deals with how science is conveyed to the public through art. Snip: 

"Through the work of five contemporary artists, the exhibitions explore the role visual aesthetics play in the translation of scientific information and, further, how that information is perceived and interpreted by the viewer."

Be sure to check out the link for tickets/fees, etc. I can't go, but if anyone does, I'd welcome a guest blog post on the evening. 

By the way, the picture above is of a sculpture in Berlin called "Molecule Men."

47-million-year-old fossil enters 24-hour news cycle

The NY Times has a good story today about the PR blitz that's been set up for the unveiling of a new fossil, Darwinius masillae.  Darwinius is getting a History Channel special, book deal, and will run the gamut on ABC News, including GMA, World News and Nightling.  Snip: 

"Any pop band is doing the same thing," said Jorn H. Hurum, a scientist at the University of Oslo who acquired the fossil and assembled the team of scientists that studied it. "Any athlete is doing the same thing. We have to start thinking the same way in science."

Now I hear he has his own Facebook group :)

Darwinius masillae fan page on Facebook

Our fossilized friend, Darwinius masillae, didn't appear to have her own fan page yet, so I set one up here. 

We're born scientists

Turns out that we're wired for science. Feist, in "The Psychology of Science and the Origins of the Scientific Mind," explains that from our earliest days, people seek out patterns, classifying objects and events, looking for causes to effects. 

"Finding such regularities or patterns lay the foundation for expecting the world to behave in a certain way, which is the beginning of hypothesis formation as well as causal thought," he says. 

Certainly such thinking is an evolutionary advantage. If one of your cavemen buddies eats some berries and then gets sick, recognizing that it was probably the berries, and not the angry gods who caused the illness, helps ensure you don't make the same mistake. It provokes some interesting questions: Is the cause-effect approach to the world a neurological underpinning of conservatism? Not necessarily the formal, "big C" political type, but the skeptical, reticent type. Playing it safe keeps you, well safer than someone who doesn't. 

So if conservatism has evolutionary roots then that could explain why people fear change generally, and of disruptive technology (sudden and big change) especially. Are innovations that are framed as the newest form of something old better received than innovations presented as the "latest and greatest thing?"

I'm at IPREX09 for the next 48 hours

I'll be MIA for the next 48 hours.  My firm (Makovsky + Company) is hosting the IPREX09 conference Thursday through Saturday.  For those who don't know, IPREX is the world's second largest network of independent PR firms, and it enables us to serve clients just about anywhere in the world on a moment's notice. 

All of this is my long way of saying I won't be blogging here for the next two days because I'll be blogging, Tweeting, YouTubing, Flickring and even LinkedIning the conference as a member of Makovsky's Social Media Swat Team.  The team covers events like IPREX09 as a way of "socializing" the content, building online reputations, spreading intellectual capital.  (I know, it's a shameless plug, but you have to admit the name is cool.)

You can follow all the action -- including meetings with international editors at Bloomberg, a panel discussion at NYU starring 8 heads of global PR, and a presentation and Q&A at Google -- here: 

Blog: iprex09.wordpress.com

Twitter: Twitter.com/iprex09

Twitter hash: #iprex09

YouTube

Two Cultures event: Is the divide between sciences & humanities a good thing?

The first panel features D. Graham Burnett, history professor at Princeton, Ann Blair, history professor at Harvard, Lawrence Krauss, professor in the school of Earth and Space Exploration, Arizona State, Kenneth Miller, biology professor, Brown, Guy Ortolano, history professor, U. Virginia.

Highlights (all paraphrased except where noted in quotes.  If any of the speakers would like to clarify or elaborate, please email me.)
AB: The gap is a good thing.  In the Middle Ages it helped to separate science first from religion.  Back then philosophers were considered “lower” than theologists, so that status helped science advance on its own terms.
In the enlightenment we saw advances in math, which opened things up to the masses.  But after calculus was invented, that door was largely shut to all but a few. That said, fields that relied observation (assuming things like astronomy) were still largely accessible.

In the early 19th century we see the professionalization of science  with the creations of academies and “ologies.”

Since then, the proliferation of conferences, journals and formal schools created bigger barriers between scientific fields.  So now there are many cultures within science. 
It's better to keep things separate because science benefits from the perception that it's objective and steers clear of ideology. Science’s reputation is an asset.
“What” and “how” types of questions are best answered by science. But sometimes we get into answering “ought” questions.  But when scientists try to answer those, they get linked with political fortunes which inevitably fall.
We need multiple cultures with recognized authorities, bridged by people like those at this event.

KM: What do the Evolution Wars have to do with the two cultures?
I'm not a historian, but evolution has been THE burning issue in many state elections.  It's a paradox that the

US

leads the world in biomedical research, but we are at bottom of list of countries that embraces evolution. 

Speaking about a genetic marker that proves humans evolved from apes:  “If the designer wanted to fool us into thinking we had come from evolution, this would be it.”

And yet this marker  has been known for more than 25 years. It's common knowledge among geneticists.  But it's a communications failure that no one else knows.
Plum: One critical of Snow said the division wasn't between cultures but classes.  
...And this is where the conversation's pace exceeded my 
Blackberry pecking abilities.  You can pick up the trail at Twitter.com/davidhrosen