That used to be you

This evening, I attended a talk through the Hudson Union Society given by Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum about their recent book That used to be us: How America fell behind in the world it invented and how we can come back.

Those of you who read Friedman’s New York Times column, may be familiar with some if the main points of the book. Namely that there is a global trend towards overpopulation, increased communication and dwindling resources. And that while many predict China may be on the rise to power and the US has mismanaged its economy and slowed on innovation, America should look back at its successes in the past and return to the policy that made it strong while keeping up with communication and green technology.

The book ends with Freidman and Mandelbaum’s ideal 2012 presidential platform. They are advocating that an independent candidate take up issues of investment in infrastructure and education, spending cuts to Medicare and Social Security and tax increases – perferably related to fuel usage.

Of course in a situation like this, topdown change often has the greatest impact. However, I would like to take one of the major questions of the evening and apply it to the individual, in particular the 9.1% of Americans that are unemployed. The question to ask is “What were you doing in the past that worked?” When you think about the good things you’ve done it can focus your energy towards repeating those habits and outcomes. There is something very powerful about putting a positive spin on your assessment of the past. Understanding what you have done well can help you make decisions on where you can add the most benefit. Yes, top down change is going to be necessary to change the direction the US is headed, but bottom-up change and a need for individual innovation and reinvigoration is also going to be crucial to our recovery. This isn’t about glossing over what may have gone wrong – but if you’ve had success in the past chances are you can pinpoint what went right and harness that into more future success.

An end to self-contained news?

I was inspired by Felix Salmon's recent comparison of blog writing to traditional journalism to consider whether the shift is aiding or hindering our ability to stay informed about the news.
From Salmon's blog:

Traditional media outlets, by contrast [to blogs], generally have an incomprehensible love affair with Microsoft Word... It’s generally more difficult to insert links, especially when I’m dealing with people who edit for print first and who then just put that edited copy up online. The pieces have to be much more self-contained, and you have to be much more careful about assuming any kind of expertise on the part of your readers: if they’re reading your stuff on paper, then it’s much harder for them to Google anything they don’t understand.

Increasingly we're seeing the major news outlets embrace the blogger approach to the news, using social media tools to harness. The most recent example is today's New York Times decision to structure its pay wall so that shared links on Facebook and Twitter will still be accessible. One of my favorite mainstream uses of social media is the BBC World Service which uses its Have your Say forum as a way to get first-person accounts of global events and varying political and religious opinions which it then sites and uses in its news, radio and television coverage. It's a modern extension of a news tip hotline but due to the global nature of its audience has an amazing reach that spans its 24-hour news cycle. A third example of just how ubiquitous social media and blogs have become to news reporting is the launch of Google Realtime and the search engine's use of blog posts and Twitter feeds next to larger media sources.

Do we give anything up by using a mass of often anonymous or unveiled sources to get the latest information? Though I have heard several arguments against crowd-sourcing its benefits outweigh any concerns of misinformation or libel. Namely this is because in addition to the ability of accessing ongoing updates to any issue from all over the globe, the depth of any story or issue that becomes available is phenomenal. As Salmon points out on the web one can instantly search for more information or explore related links.

Today's social media world is a bit like Orwell's Animal Farm, all sources are equal but some are more equal than others. Big publishing names, trusted bloggers and the recommended links from your friends are the the winning sources.

So what's next for social news reporting? So if news sites are now custom serving content, using anonymous web sources and choosing their headliners based on what's most popular - where do we go from here in terms of crowd-sourcing? More importantly, when it comes to information is it ok to give the people only what they want? There's arguably a 10:1 ratio of Charlie Sheen articles to those on sustainable agriculture. How do we maintain the balance between interesting information and useful information? In the future will every story come with a litany of opinion, reaction, re-reaction and YouTube parodies?

Metaphor: Is there any other way to talk science?

I was struck today by New York Times' reporter Dennis Overbye's use of metaphor to report scientists' pursuit on other planets for the origin of life on Earth. His piece evokes Eden as a metaphor for the hot primordial gunk where the first particles meshed to create living organisms. The metaphor instantly calls to mind the dawn of existence, a bountiful variety that subsequently sprung from its many mutations and a specific location outside of the Earth we know today.

In fact, most of our scientific understanding is neatly described through common or allegorical metaphors. Atoms are building blocks that operate like orbiting planetary systems. The Internet is a web of information, your browser accesses a series of packets to load a web page. String theory is built on the metaphor of electrons and quarks as strings. In physics gravity pulls us, in immunology microbes carry bacteria and in chemistry molecules bounce while heat flows.

Metaphor is a cognitive coping mechanism that helps us contemplate and understand phenomena that we can't see. Taken too literally, scientific metaphors can prevent us from truly observing all of the important details or attributes of a phenomenon and prevent further scientific discovery. What metaphors do you rely on to talk about science?