Only 45% f---ked

“I’ve been coming from mountain to mountain, and sometimes you feel like you’re actually fucked. But when you say you are fucked you are only 45% fucked.”
Mountaineer Nimsdai Purja ("Nim"), telling it like it is to climbers at K2 basecamp while trying to convince them to attempt the summit despite risks, setbacks, and low morale. From the film 14 Peaks: Nothing is Impossible (2121) which documents Nim & team's astonishing ascent of all 14 of Earth's 8,000 meter peaks in seven months. Nim and team made the summit two days later and paved the way for 24 other climbers to summit as well.

I Went To A Bar For Time Travelers (Can museums save the world?)

I just posted a new essay, I Went To A Bar For Time Travelers, subtitled “Can museums save the world'?

It’s an un-edited, pre-publication draft of a piece for for Seize the Moment: Rethinking the Museum (Marsha Semmel, Ken Yellis, Avi Decter, ed.) to be published in early 2022 by Rowman and Littlefield. It is also an expansion of a short piece I wrote with the same title for Ten Perspectives on the Future of Digital Culture, a 2018 publication commemorating the 10th anniversary of Europeana.

The basic idea of the essay is to use a very modest, first-person time-travel narrative as a way to speak bluntly about what I see as the cultural sector’s reticence to get much involved in climate action and social justice.

In one passage I find myself standing at my office window looking out at the Library of Congress, the National Archives, and the Smithsonian Institution in the days, months, and years following 9-11 (a very real memory for me and one that has shaped much of my work over the last 20 years).

How would these three, august institutions help us understand what had happened to us as a nation? What would they do to help us chart our way forward in this complex and dangerous world?

As I stared into my beer, I couldn’t think of a single thing that any of these institutions, or even museums in general, had done to help Americans think clearer thoughts or make better decisions after 9/11. It wasn’t a museum’s job, or so we thought. Just hunker down, entertain the guests, conserve the collections and don’t rock the boat. So we lost our minds and went to war for 20 years without even an exhibition catalog as a souvenir.

More at I Went To A Bar For Time Travelers (Can museums save the world?).

* * * On a related note, in November, 2021 I’m organizing a workshop and strategy charrette to try and do something to jumpstart real action from the cultural sector. We need help funding travel for participants. Please give us a hand!

GoFundMe: Help Send Climate Activists To The Hague
https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-send-climate-activists-to-the-hague

Image credits: Remix of ‘The Boyfriend’ by Alžbeta Halušková. CC BY-SA. Source material: Za frajerom | Hanula, Jozef. Slovak National Gallery. Public domain. Creator: Alžbeta Halušková. Date: 2018. Country: Slovakia. CC BY-SA

Gone

“The Molokaʻi creeper is among the eight Hawaiian birds that were officially declared extinct on Sept. 29. (Jeremy Snell/Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum)” — Washington Post

“The Molokaʻi creeper is among the eight Hawaiian birds that were officially declared extinct on Sept. 29. (Jeremy Snell/Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum)” — Washington Post

“Among the eight Hawaiian birds officially declared extinct Wednesday are the prismatic Maui ’akepa and Moloka’i creeper, and curve-beaked Kaua’i ʻakialoa and nukupu’u. Also gone is the Kaua’i ’o’o, whose haunting, flutelike mating call was last heard three decades ago.”
Ivory-billed woodpecker officially declared extinct, along with 22 other species, by Dino Grandoni. Washington Post, 29 September 2021.

It's on us

Robert Kagan’s gut-wrenching essay in the Washington Post on Sunday about the crisis in American democracy (see below) reminded me of this 2018 piece by Zeynep Tufekci in the MIT Technology Review, How social media Took us from Tahir Square to Donald Trump.

At the end, Tufekci argues that while corporate social media and Russian election interference were a horrible influence on democratic processes, Russian trolls didn’t get us to where we are by themselves.

But we didn’t get where we are simply because of digital technologies. The Russian government may have used online platforms to remotely meddle in US elections, but Russia did not create the conditions of social distrust, weak institutions, and detached elites that made the US vulnerable to that kind of meddling.

Russia did not make the US (and its allies) initiate and then terribly mishandle a major war in the Middle East, the after-effects of which—among them the current refugee crisis—are still wreaking havoc, and for which practically nobody has been held responsible. Russia did not create the 2008 financial collapse: that happened through corrupt practices that greatly enriched financial institutions, after which all the culpable parties walked away unscathed, often even richer, while millions of Americans lost their jobs and were unable to replace them with equally good ones.

Russia did not instigate the moves that have reduced Americans’ trust in health authorities, environmental agencies, and other regulators. Russia did not create the revolving door between Congress and the lobbying firms that employ ex-politicians at handsome salaries. Russia did not defund higher education in the United States. Russia did not create the global network of tax havens in which big corporations and the rich can pile up enormous wealth while basic government services get cut.

These are the fault lines along which a few memes can play an outsize role. And not just Russian memes: whatever Russia may have done, domestic actors in the United States and Western Europe have been eager, and much bigger, participants in using digital platforms to spread viral misinformation.

Even the free-for-all environment in which these digital platforms have operated for so long can be seen as a symptom of the broader problem, a world in which the powerful have few restraints on their actions while everyone else gets squeezed. Real wages in the US and Europe are stuck and have been for decades while corporate profits have stayed high and taxes on the rich have fallen. Young people juggle multiple, often mediocre jobs, yet find it increasingly hard to take the traditional wealth-building step of buying their own home—unless they already come from privilege and inherit large sums.

If digital connectivity provided the spark, it ignited because the kindling was already everywhere. The way forward is not to cultivate nostalgia for the old-world information gatekeepers or for the idealism of the Arab Spring. It’s to figure out how our institutions, our checks and balances, and our societal safeguards should function in the 21st century—not just for digital technologies but for politics and the economy in general. This responsibility isn’t on Russia, or solely on Facebook or Google or Twitter. It’s on us.

Set for chaos

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“The United States is heading into its greatest political and constitutional crisis since the Civil War, with a reasonable chance over the next three to four years of incidents of mass violence, a breakdown of federal authority, and the division of the country into warring red and blue enclaves. The warning signs may be obscured by the distractions of politics, the pandemic, the economy and global crises, and by wishful thinking and denial. But about these things there should be no doubt:

First, Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee for president in 2024. The hope and expectation that he would fade in visibility and influence nave been delusional. …

Second, Trump and his Republican allies are actively preparing to ensure his victory with whatever means necessary. …

The stage is thus being set for chaos.
The Opinions Essay / Opinion: Our constitutional crisis is already here, by contributing columnist Robert Kagan. Washington Post, September 26, 2021.

From a 6,000 word piece in Sunday’s Washington Post. I was glad to see this published — a very unusual (the Post’s editors seemed to barely knew where to put it), comprehensive, and forceful “long read” that attempts to make sense of this dangerous moment in America. The sense of doom, of the walls closing in on us from every direction (political, cultural, educational, economic) feels very true to me.

A Trump victory is likely to mean at least the temporary suspension of American democracy as we have known it. We are already in a constitutional crisis. The destruction of democracy might not come until November 2024, but critical steps in that direction are happening now. In a little more than a year, it may become impossible to pass legislation to protect the electoral process in 2024. …

Today’s arguments…will seem quaint in three years if the American political system enters a crisis for which the Constitution offers no remedy. Most Americans — and all but a handful of politicians — have refused to take this possibility seriously enough to try to prevent it.

The dizzying career of Melvin Van Peebles

Melvin Van Peebles, whose low-budget 1971 phenomenon, “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song” — an X-rated film about a Black revolutionary’s survival on the run — proved a milestone of independent and African American cinema, died Sept. 21 at his home in Manhattan. He was 89.

Over a six-decade career, Mr. Van Peebles continually reinvented himself: as an Air Force officer, a San Francisco cable-car gripman (operator), a self-taught film auteur, a novelist in English and French, a Tony Award-nominated playwright and composer, an Emmy Award-winning TV writer, a spoken-word artist and, for a spell in the 1980s, the only Black floor trader on the American Stock Exchange.
Melvin Van Peebles, fiercely independent filmmaker, dies at 89, by Adam Bernstein, Washington Post, September 22, 2021. Image is the poster for Peebles' 1971 film Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song. Image credit: Employee(s) of Cinemation Industries, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons.

Other things

“In giving us a glimpse of financial freedom, 2020 also robbed us of pretenses and excuses. If we are not doing a global vaccine plan, it is not for lack of funds. It is because indifference, or selfish calculation — vaccinate America first — or real technical obstacles prevent us from ‘actually’ doing it. It turns out that budget constraints, in all their artificiality, had spared us from facing the all-too-limited willingness and capacity for collective action. Now if you hear someone arguing that we cannot afford to bring billions of people out of poverty or we cannot afford to transition the energy system away from fossil fuels, we know how to respond: Either you are invoking technological obstacles, in which case we need a suitably scaled, Warp Speed-style program to overcome them, or it is simply a matter of priorities. There are other things you would rather do.”
What if the Coronavirus Crisis Is Just a Trial Run?, by economic historian Adam Tooze. New York Times, September 1, 2021

A sting in the tail

This failure [to develop a global vaccination program] is all the more glaring for another lesson that the pandemic revealed: Budget constraints don’t seem to exist; money is a mere technicality. The hard limits of financial sustainability, policed, we used to think, by ferocious bond markets, were blurred by the 2008 financial crisis. In 2020, they were erased.

The world discovered that John Maynard Keynes was right when he declared during World War II that “anything we can actually do, we can afford.” The sheer scale of the action was intoxicating. … If money was a mere technicality, what else could be done? Action on social justice, climate change, the Green New Deal, all seemed within reach.

[But] Keynes’s bon mot has a sting in its tail: We can afford anything we can actually do. The problem is agreeing on what to do and how to do it.”

What if the Coronavirus Crisis Is Just a Trial Run?, by economic historian Adam Tooze. New York Times, September 1, 2021

If an economist was a horse

Economics, over the years, has become more and more abstract and divorced from events in the real world. Economists, by and large, do not study the workings of the actual economic system. They theorize about it. As Ely Devons, an English economist, once said in a meeting: “If economists wanted to study the horse, they wouldn’t go around and look at horses. They’d sit in their studies and say to themselves, `What would I do if I were a horse?’”
Economist Ronald Coase, in a speech to the International Society of New Institutional Economics, September 17, 1999, Washington DC. (Citation via Wikiquote.)

Sustainable Business Strategy

Professor Rebecca Henderson, delivering the final remarks for Sustainable Business Strategy

Professor Rebecca Henderson, delivering the final remarks for Sustainable Business Strategy

I just completed a 4-week class on Sustainable Business Strategy from Harvard Business School / HBS Online as part of a cohort of 398 people from 74 countries — by far the most diverse and international learning environment I’ve ever been a part of.

Case studies and other avenues of investigation included,

  • Unilever (supply chains, multi-sector coalitions, the business case for human/environmental sustainability {"Business can't succeed in a world that's failing" - Paul Polman"})

  • Walmart (human resources; "pre-competitive" collaboration; purpose)

  • Norsk Gjenvinning (a Norwegian waste management company, "jumping the S-curve" to a new strategy and standard of practice — very badass)

  • King Arthur Flour (employee-owned, B corps, stakeholder value); The business value of "ESG" (Environment, Society, Governance) reporting

  • Universal Investors (super-scale investors, and their pragmatic need to address systemic environmental/social problems to ensure future success)

  • Inclusive vs. Extractive Institutions ("extractive" being those that concentrate wealth/power in few/elites)

  • Barrick Gold in Papua New Guinea: a case study on corporate responsibility and the UN @globalcompact (And I am ashamed/amazed to say that I knew almost nothing about the Global Compact before this course, despite 4 years of work w UN in almost exactly that same problem space — sheesh! Lifelong learning FTW!)

  • Some inputs and perspectives from various members of the Harvard Business School / Kennedy School faculty, including, poignantly, Marshall Ganz

  • And, hah, frequent guest appearances from The Tragedy of the Commons and the Prisoner's Dilemma, who were ever present as an explanation for why cooperation is both necessary, and (sometimes) challenging.

in the online context and with such a large/diverse international cohort, I wished the cases and voices were less about US and European firms, laws, and institutions and more about the thinking and methods of actors in different contexts. Though understanding the potential leverage of companies like Unilever and Walmart is essential, I feel that we missed an opportunity to train ourselves to learn from the 6 billion people and millions of firms and initiatives that exist outside the Western Establishment Business and Academic Bubble (WEBAB?!).

LOL this is starting to sound like a book review, which is not my intention. I’m really just processing here…

I'm left with a much deeper appreciation for the business value — the absolute necessity — of "doing good", and for the profound importance of multi-stakeholder efforts (gov, biz, civil society, culture, "the people") for driving change.

Kudos to Rebecca Henderson, the professor, architect, and soul of the course. I didn’t expect to cry at the end of a business strategy class, but I did. Here are Rebecca Henderson’s final remarks.

This is in some ways a terrifying moment to be alive. But it is also profoundly exciting. In the great scheme of things, we're all dust in the wind, and no single one of us can change the world alone. But we can be absolutely sure that if we decide to do nothing, nothing will happen. People sometimes ask me why they should think about sustainability when the world of business is hard enough on its own. You will not be surprised to hear that I tell them that thinking about sustainability will make them a great deal of money. But when I've known them for a while, I also tell them that the answer is that giving one's life to the hard problems creates a sense of joy and meaning that money cannot buy and gives you great companions for the journey.

Actionable solutions

Bruce Springsteen, talking with President Barack Obama.

Then came the country music in my late 20s and 30s. Looking for other solutions than Rock music provided. Rock music was a great music and there was some class anger in it and that agreed with me. Ah, then there was a beautiful romanticism and melodies, a lot of energy. But as you were getting older, it didn't address your adult problems.

So I went to Country music. Country music was great, incredible singing and playing, but it was rather fatalistic. You know?

So, I said well, “Who's trying to play…Where is a music of hope?” And when you went to Woody Guthrie and Bob [Dylan], you know... They were spelling out the hard world that you lived in, but they were also providing you, somehow, with some transcendence and some actionable solution to societal, and your own, personal problems. You could be active.

That drew my attention because I was now a relatively big rock star. I was interested in maintaining ties to my community. I was interested in giving voice to both myself and folks in my community. I was also interested in being active to a certain degree, taking some of what I was earning, putting it back into the community […] And that was where I found my full satisfaction and that's how I put all the pieces together.

Bruce Springsteen, talking with President Barack Obama in the American Music episode of their podcast series Renegades, via @kattvantar.

Slides for "What is awesome?" at Computers in Libraries

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Here are the slides for What Is Awesome? How to create a ‘reference survey’ for your new digital initiatives, a short talk I’m giving at Computers in Libraries today about how to do a lightweight competitive analysis for your new digital initiatives.

I’ll be joined today by special guest star Meta Knol, Director of the Leiden 2022 European City of Science initiative.

"What websites should we look at?" or "What have you seen that is good?" are questions that often get asked at the beginning of new digital projects. But with the vastness of the Internet and large number of new apps and technologies appearing every day it can be hard to answer those questions in a way that creates useful, actionable insights for teams and decision makers.

In this talk I use Meta’s project as a case study to show participants how they can approach this challenge, and what else they can do (and what they shouldn’t do) when someone asks “What is awesome?” on the Internet.

(The examples I use are drawn from 4 recent posts below, starting here.)

Leiden City of Science References, Part 4: Convenings, Places, Activities

This is the last post in a 4-part series about “engaging, mind-blowing, and inclusive websites and/or online campaigns” relating to art and/or science — all in response to a call on Twitter from Meta Knol, Director of the Leiden 2022 European City of Science initiative.

This post focuses on Convenings, Places, and Activities. Previous posts focused on,

…It’s a nice, broad range of categories but, admittedly, non-scientific and there is a lot of overlap between them.

All the same qualifiers and caveats apply to this bunch of references as the last 3 — I’m focusing on science content from my own tiny Western frame-of-reference (though I would dearly love to know what the wonderful websites and campaigns look like from the perspective of people in Jakarta, Mexico City, Mumbai…!); I’m drawn to bottom-up & community-focused content and interactions (though I’m clearly a sucker for a good story); and I’m not as impressed with fancy bespoke apps and custom websites as I am with simple, direct, communication with and for people and communities.

As I’ve thought about Meta’s question over the last few weeks and considered my own responses it became really clear to me that the websites, apps, and digital projects and things that have brought me joy have rarely been the kinds of standalone apps or carefully crafted content experiences that museums and educational institutions often want to produce. Not that those kinds of here-is-the-virtual-tour-of-our-Cezanne-exhibition or here-is-our-learn-about-the-cosmos-app experiences can’t be joyous and wonderful — but, to me, the voice and the shocking, surprising, joy-giving wonderfulness of the Internet and tech comes, when it comes, more from the wilder, unconstrained corners of the web — and the parts of the Internet where people-meet-people — than from the parts that Institutions have tried to tame and control.

Finally, a lot of the examples and references I’m drawn to don’t fit neatly into the category of websites, apps, or digital things. For example, Fridays for Future, cited below, isn’t a website or an app, it’s a global climate-action movement for which social media and the web is an integral part. Meetup.com, also cited below, is a web platform, but it’s not the web/tech aspect of the platform that’s particularly interesting (though there is a lot to study and learn there) but what it helps to accomplish out in the world.

All of my choices across each of these 4 posts reflect my feeling that when it comes to designing things to help or inspire or serve people and communities — thinking about digital and physical as two different things is a trap; a dead end that leads nowhere. From what I’ve observed, digital and physical are just two parts of whole, and when teams think openly and creatively across the whole, blended spectrum of our digital and physical lives then wonderful, exciting, important things can happen.

Convenings, Places, and Activities

AI Dungeon

Alternate Reality Game — World Without Oil

  • What: An ARG (Alternate Reality Game) that asked players to imagine what it would be like to live in a world without oil. “The game sketched out the overarching conditions of a realistic oil shock, then called upon players to imagine and document their lives under those conditions.…The game's central site linked to all the player material, and the game's characters documented their own lives, and commented on player stories, on a community blog and individual blogs, plus via IM, chat, Twitter and other media.” (via Wikipedia)

  • Why: ARGs and “serious play” (games for change, etc) often intend to help people develop new kinds of creative, civic responses to plausible future scenarios. “Play it before you live it” was the game’s motto. ARGs are also known for involving players in the shaping of the plot and narratives as gameplay progresses.

  • Website: Archive/contact, http://writerguy.com/wwo/metacontact.htm

  • Press/info: One Story With 1,700 Different Authors (Current, 2008), https://current.org/2009/05/one-story-with-1700-authors/; World Without Oil (Wikipedia), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Without_Oil

  • Sample: Video and info, http://writerguy.com/wwo/metahome.htm

Fridays for Future

  • What: Global youth protest movement focused on the climate emergency. Catalyzed by Greta Thunberg; also known as School Strike for Climate.

  • Why: Global protest movement reaching remarkable scale and visibility. Coordinated, amplified, and publicized through social media with the #fridaysforfuture hashtag, among others. A digital strike and a Fridays For Future Digital movement have been organized for those unable to protest “outside” and in places with COVID-19 restrictions.

  • Website: https://fridaysforfuture.org/ . See a map of future strikes (next one is March 19, 2021) and register your own event, https://fridaysforfuture.org/action-map/map/

  • Press/info: (Note: this article was written by a high-school student for the Seattle Times) “‘A mass woke-ning’: Seattle’s Gen Zers on the future they want to see” (Seattle Times, 2021), https://www.seattletimes.com/life/seattle-area-gen-zers-talk-about-the-future-they-want-to-see/

  • Sample: …

Into the Wild

  • What: 2017 Augmented Reality exhibition at the ArtScience Museum, Singapore. The museum worked with film and installation artist Brian Gothong Tan to create a rainforest inside the museum’s public corridors.

  • Why: Clever and resourceful use of non-gallery spaces to engage visitors in a visceral, playful way on the subject of deforestation, biodiversity, and the climate emergency. One interesting feature of the exhibition: visitors could plant a virtual tree and (for a fee) a real tree would be planted on their behalf by an NGO partner in Indonesia. (Note: I didn’t see this installation first-hand, but I talked to some of the museum’s team not long after the exhibition closed.)

  • Website: https://www.marinabaysands.com/museum/into-the-wild.html

  • Press/info: Press release by a project partner, the World Wildlife Federation, https://www.wwf.sg/?291970%2FVenture-Into-the-Wild-at-ArtScience-Museum

  • Sample: Video (MediaMonks, 2017), https://youtu.be/fgE7EE22_-0

Meetup.com

  • What: Meetup is “a platform for finding and building local communities. People use Meetup to meet new people, learn new things, find support, get out of their comfort zones, and pursue their passions, together.” (via Meetup.com/about)

  • Why: In-person meetups have taken a hammering during the pandemic, but the range and diversity of science-related groups and meetups is staggering. (I found over a hundred science-related groups within 100km of Leiden before my hand got tired from scrolling.) Someone told me that in fast-moving fields like robotics and AI a meetup is often the best way to share and learn of cutting-edge developments, with some topics/meetups attracting over 1,000 attendees on short notice.

  • Website: https://meetup.com

  • Press/info:

  • Sample:

Pokémon Go

  • What: A place-based, digital/physical augmented reality app, game, and global public phenomenon.

  • Why: A reminder that people can use games, stories, and tech in fascinating, surprising, and inspiring ways.
    Vice News found a link to scientific thinking as well,

    "I think the biggest lesson is how many people are truly interested in biodiversity, even if the biodiversity they are first introduced to is fictional," Morgan Jackson, an insect taxonomist and PhD candidate at the University of Guelph, told me over email.

    "It's easy to write Pokémon off as a simple game or waste of time when there are so many 'real' plants and animals out there waiting to be recognized. But there are a lot of barriers to learning about nature, and there's no tutorial mode to help people get started like there is in Pokémon." (Source/link below)

  • Website: https://www.pokemongo.com/en-us/

  • Press/info: Overview, Pokémon Go Will Make You Crave Augmented Reality (New Yorker, 2016), https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/pokemon-go-will-make-you-crave-augmented-reality; Is 'Pokémon Go' Good For Science? (Vice, 2016) https://www.vice.com/en/article/ezpad7/is-pokemon-go-good-for-science

  • Sample: See trailer at https://youtu.be/eMobkagZu64

Public Libraries

  • What: Public libraries as public and virtual places where people engage with science content.

  • Why: Civics, community…Libraries are an under-utilized resource and platform when it comes to the production of city-scale events and campaigns. Many libraries host events and public lectures, have after-school clubs for kids, offer classes and educational opportunities, and support “labs” and maker spaces as well.

  • Website: …

  • Press/info: …

  • Sample: See, for example, Do Space in Omaha, Nebraska, “a community technology library, a digital workshop, and an innovation playground filled with new opportunities to learn, grow, explore and create” https://dospace.org/; NASA @ My Library campaign (2017), https://science.nasa.gov/science-activation-team/nasa-at-my-library

Addendum/misc.

In working on this post I remembered a few other online/digital science-related things that made gave me a good, positive buzz ;)

Virtual Dissection Table

  • What: A big, interactive touch-screen table for looking at (and into, and through) the human body.

  • Why: Just a perfect, flawlessly executed use of touch-tables to visualize something that’s very hard to grasp in other media. Using one of these tables makes me think about the human body in an entirely new way.

  • Website: There are many vendors. Anatomage is one, and while I think their video is good the “sample” video below gives a better sense of what it’s like to actually use one of these with your own hands.

  • Press/info: TED talk and demo by Anatomage CEO Jack Choi (2012), https://www.ted.com/talks/jack_choi_on_the_virtual_dissection_table

  • Sample: Pirogov Interactive Anatomy table: tutorial for users (2020), https://youtu.be/GEw90E_rEOE

Do You Love Me (Spot, Atlas, Boston Dynamics)

AR Chemistry Apps

  • What: Augmented Reality applications that let you see and manipulate molecules and chemical reactions.

  • Why: Chemistry can be really abstract and hard to understand for people (and it’s often poorly taught) but these apps can help people understand and appreciate how amazing chemistry really is. (I think having a grasp of chemistry is essential for 21st century citizenship.)

  • Website: There are a lot of apps out there and honestly I have no idea which ones are good, but the videos below will give a sense of what this is all about.

  • Press/info: Great story! — Vietnamese High School Student Creates AR Chemistry App After Academic Flop (Vietnam Times, 2017), https://vietnamtimes.org.vn/vietnamese-high-school-student-creates-ar-chemistry-app-after-academic-flop-12194.html

  • Sample: AR Chemistry Augmented Reality Education Arloon (2017), https://youtu.be/Qi3h18wJJiI
    This one is a little confusing, but shows the potential for organic chemistry, MoleculAR (v0.4): an augmented reality app for organic chemistry (2018), https://youtu.be/Q67-MH5_4xQ

Perseverance Rover Panoramas and VR

Other post in this series: Part 1: Websites, Channels, and Platforms | Part 2: Campaigns and Happenings | Part 3: Media and Products | Part 4: Convenings, Places, Activities

Leiden City of Science References, Part 3: Media & Products

This is part 3 of a 4-part series of posts in reaction to an inquiry on Twitter from Meta Knol, Director of the Leiden City of Science initiative, about “the most engaging, interesting, mind blowing, and inclusive websites and/or online campaign[s]” in the field of art and/or science.

This post focuses on Media & Products, and previous posts focused on Websites, Channels, and Platforms, and Campaigns and Happenings.

All the same qualifiers and caveats apply to this bunch of references as the last 2 — I’m focusing on science content from my own tiny Western frame-of-reference; I’m drawn to bottom-up & community-focused content and interactions (though I’m clearly a sucker for a good story); and I’m not as impressed with fancy bespoke apps and custom websites as I am with simple, direct, communication with and for people and communities.

So with that being said, here’s a quick list of things I would want rattling around in my head if I were designing a year long festival of science.

Media & Products

Cosmos

  • What: Groundbreaking and wildly influential 1980 television series hosted by (and co-written by) astronomer Carl Sagan. A best selling companion book was also produced. A follow-up series was produced in 2014, and though the science content is clearly more up-to-date I felt the newer version didn’t have the grace and majesty of the original.

  • Why: Cosmos brought the majesty and wonder of scientific inquiry to the masses and inspired generations of people to become scientists and look at our universe (and our role in it) in a new way.

  • Website: …

  • Press/info: Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmos:_A_Personal_Voyage

  • Sample: The famous “Pale Blue Dot” sequence, https://youtu.be/GO5FwsblpT8
    Many full episodes are available on YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=carl+sagan+cosmos+streaming

Edge Foundation Annual Questions

  • What: For 20 years (1998-2018) the Edge Foundation asked an “annual question” that is answered in the form of short responses from hundreds of diverse scientists, creatives, and intellectuals. Questions have included, “What is your favorite deep, elegant, or beautiful explanation?”, “What scientific idea is ready for retirement?”, and “What is the last question?” The responses are published en masse on the edge.org website, and selected essays are curated into book form.

  • Why: The Edge questions constitute a unique and powerful example of collective intelligence, where the “the wisdom of the crowd” shines light on complex subjects from diverse points-of-view.

  • Website: https://edge.org

  • Press/info: Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_Foundation,_Inc.. Note that Edge.org founder and editor John Brockman has come under scrutiny as an associate of Jeffrey Epstein.

  • Sample: What Will Change Everything (Published in print as This Will Change Everything), 2009, which had 152 contributors. The essays are here. ,

Magazines — Science and Nature

  • What: The venerable magazines, Science (the peer-reviewed journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science) and Nature.

  • Why: Both journals have been publishing groundbreaking scientific research and editorials for over 140 years. The magazines have now largely moved online and feature a robust array of newsletters, features, and articles. Many older adults may think of Science and Nature as printed magazines, but for those born more recently the journals’ existence as hybrid digital/print platforms is wholly unremarkable. To me, they are just cool and important content that I happen to interact with through a Web browser.

  • Website: Science, https://science.sciencemag.org/; Nature, https://www.nature.com/

  • Press/info: Wikipedia: Science, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_(journal); Nature, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_(journal)

  • Sample: Current issues (links above), and social media: Twitter (@ScienceMagazine, @Nature) and Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, etc

Mythbusters

  • What: Quirky, groundbreaking, cult-classic American television series.

  • Why: Unbridled curiosity, unique format, accessible to kids, passionate dedication to experimental scientific methods. The show was unparalleled in its ability to show the role of failure in the scientific creative process. Also, the show had a vibrant back-channel on social media and through email for interaction with fans, and these interactions often had a direct influence on the content of episodes.

  • Website: Homepage on the Discovery Channel, https://go.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/;

  • Press/info: Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters

  • Sample: Moon Landing Hoax, 2008, https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2m7k1z

Not Enough Dinosaurs on NPR News

  • What: “Science: 8-Year-Old Calls Out NPR For Lack Of Dinosaur Stories” — A young listener complains that there is too much boring content on National Public Radio news and not enough stories about dinosaurs.

    My name is Leo and I am 8 years old. I listen to All Things Considered in the car with mom. I listen a lot.

    I never hear much about nature or dinosaurs or things like that. Maybe you should call your show Newsy things Considered, since I don't get to hear about all the things. Or please talk more about dinosaurs and cool things.

    Sincerely,

    Leo

  • Why: Adults forget how and why kids love the world.

  • Website: …

  • Press/info: “Science: 8-Year-Old Calls Out NPR For Lack Of Dinosaur Stories”, https://www.npr.org/2021/02/09/965953078/8-year-old-calls-out-npr-for-lack-of-dinosaur-stories

  • Sample: …

Podcasts — Science Vs; Ologies

The Electromagnetic Spectrum Song

  • What: A short, catchy, amateur-created song and video to explain the electromagnetic spectrum.

  • Why: Quirky, memorable science-education content from the fringe — familiar to millions of high-school physics students around the world.

  • Website: YouTube (lots of uploads, but this seems to be the most authoritative), https://youtu.be/bjOGNVH3D4Y

  • Press/info: …

  • Sample: …

Zeynep Tufekci – newsletter

Other post in this series: Part 1: Websites, Channels, and Platforms | Part 2: Campaigns and Happenings | Part 3: Media and Products | Part 4: Convenings, Places, Activities

Leiden City of Science References, Part 2: Campaigns and Happenings

On Friday I wrote-up some references in response to an inquiry on Twitter from Meta Knol, Director of the Leiden City of Science initiative, about “the most engaging, interesting, mind blowing, and inclusive websites and/or online campaign[s]” in the field of art and/or science.

After an initial brainstorm I thought it would be easier and more useful to organize my thoughts in a series of posts here than in a zillion tweets.

Today I’ll add another category, Campaigns & Happenings, to the list of things I would want rattling around in my brain if I were creating a year-long festival of science.

As with my previous post about Websites & Channels; Platforms; and Campaigns and Happenings, my viewpoints and experiences here are limited (or blinded) by my predominantly Western, European/North American field-of-reference (What are the best citizen-science campaigns in South America? Where are the best science happenings in South Korea?!), and I am coming at this with an interest in looser, more informal, more bottom-up kinds of productions than one would typically find from cultural and scientific institutions; more “How can we see or reveal the know-how / curiosity / creative capacity of this community?” than “How can we tell audiences about this thing that we want them to know?”

In the next few days I’ll put up some thoughts about interesting Media & Products, and Convenings, Places, and Activities.

Campaigns & Happenings

Ask-a-Curator

Creative Mornings

Curators of @Sweden

  • What: A 2012-2019 campaign: Twitter account for the nation of Sweden, given to a different citizen every week.

  • Why: Official entities, governments, and institutions often choose to use friendly but stilted and inauthentic voices for their social media presence; Sweden chose to trust their voice to everyday citizens. It’s a testament to their faith in the power of democracy — messy, diverse, surprising, authentic. Also a good lesson in trusting your audience and not freaking out when user-generated-content gets controversial (per the New Yorker story, below).

  • Website: Twitter, https://twitter.com/sweden

  • Press/info: “The Pleasing Irreverence of @Sweden“ (New Yorker, 2012), https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-pleasing-irreverence-of-sweden; “Say Goodbye to @sweden, the Last Good Thing on Twitter (Wired, 2018)”, https://www.wired.com/story/goodbye-sweden-twitter/

  • Sample: Here’s the first tweet (and dialogue/replies) from Lars Lundqvist’s tenure as Curator of Sweden in July, 2012. Or dive into the archive of Tweets https://twitter.com/sweden or pick up a thread/theme from the articles above.

Day of Facts

DIY Bio community

Email to trees

  • What: City of Melbourne, Australia assigned email addresses to city-owned trees so residents could report problems, but people started writing letters to the trees!

  • Why: Example of strange, awesome, unexpected ways that people will use simple tech platforms (email!) for remarkable things. (“The street finds its own uses for things.” — William Gibson.) Evidence that people have an un-met need to express and explore their relationships with nature.
    Website: …

  • Press/info: When You Give a Tree an Email Address (The Atlantic, 2015), https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/07/when-you-give-a-tree-an-email-address/398210/

  • Sample: See the examples from the Atlantic article, cited above, or this lovely interactive from ABC News Australia.

Imgur Art Crawl

  • What: Community art show from one of the Internet’s largest image sharing & social sites.

  • Why: Making the skills, talents, and passions of the community visible. Non-transactional and non-financial. “Art” as defined by non-experts, largely absent the hangups and preconceptions of art museums, galleries, and academics.

  • Website: Announcement: https://imgur.com/gallery/RzG2mku
    Press/info: …

  • Sample: https://imgur.com/t/artcrawl — My favorites are the ones from people who cook, sew, and craft who say “I don’t know if you consider it art, but…”

Maker Faire

MOOCs

NASA Planetary Rovers and Space Probes on Twitter

Wikipedia Edit-a-Thons


Other post in this series: Part 1: Websites, Channels, and Platforms | Part 2: Campaigns and Happenings | Part 3: Media and Products | Part 4: Convenings, Places, Activities