{"id":2529,"date":"2008-04-25T10:50:44","date_gmt":"2008-04-25T10:50:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2008\/04\/25\/notes-toward-science-in-the-21\/"},"modified":"2008-04-25T10:50:44","modified_gmt":"2008-04-25T10:50:44","slug":"notes-toward-science-in-the-21","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2008\/04\/25\/notes-toward-science-in-the-21\/","title":{"rendered":"Notes Toward “Science in the 21st Century”"},"content":{"rendered":"

The organizers of the Science in the 21st<\/sup> Century<\/a> conference at the Perimeter Institute have started to collect talk abstracts<\/a> for the meeting. Actually, they started a couple of weeks ago, but I’m a Bad Person and haven’t gotten around to writing anything for them yet.<\/p>\n

It doesn’t help that this sort of thing is outside my normal range of talks, which has been strictly physics-based. This broader public intellectual stuff isn’t something I have a great deal of experience speaking about. I do write in that vein here, though, and since blogging is my obvious subject for this, I might as well rehearse it here.<\/p>\n

I’m leaning toward a title something like “Talk to Your Dog About Science: Weblogs as a Tool for Public Outreach<\/strong>. Though I might opt for being a little less cute, and go for “Weblogs and Public Outreach: Why You Should Talk to Your Dog About Science.” The content I have in mind is sort of a mix of my posts on What Everyone Should Know About Science<\/a> and The Funding Issue<\/a> and the introduction to my book, that none of you have read. A quick pass at an abstract would be:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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At a time when the great challenges facing our civilization are scientific in nature (climate change, sustainable energy, pandemic disease), public understanding and appreciation of science seems to be at an all-time low. I will argue that the Internet in general and weblogs specifically provide an opportunity to address this lack of understanding, both through bringing science outreach directly to the public, but also by humanizing scientists to the public. I will illustrate with examples from my own experience blogging about physics for a popular audience, and explaining quantum mechanics to my dog.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I figure the talk has to be about blogs, and really, the dog needs to be in there somewhere, because it’s absolutely the best anecdote I have. I’m less certain about whether to go with the hectoring “We have failed at our jobs as scientists” approach, or to just try to be gentle and funny. It could go either way.<\/p>\n

I’m open to suggestions, though– you know where the comments are.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The organizers of the Science in the 21st Century conference at the Perimeter Institute have started to collect talk abstracts for the meeting. Actually, they started a couple of weeks ago, but I’m a Bad Person and haven’t gotten around to writing anything for them yet. It doesn’t help that this sort of thing is… Continue reading Notes Toward “Science in the 21st Century”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2529\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}