The Babel Fish reverses the problem defined by its namesake; the original Tower of Babel (according to the Bible) inspired the Deity to confuse human beings by making them unable to understand each other.
The Babel Fish made me think. What if we took all the thousands of hours of science programs my colleagues and I have broadcast over the decades and mined them for specials on any named topic? Suppose you wanted to know about AIDS and fancied hearing the pioneers who first identified HIV, Montaigner and Gallo, then find out about the tracking of transmission, attempts to find treatments, and the search for a vaccine-the whole story told by those who were involved, in a format you could listen to anywhere. If a discovery were made next week of a proven vaccine or a cure, we would add that to the recording and you would be up to date. Transcript included, of course. Pick any other topic: nuclear power, GM crops, cyber sex, asteroids, black holes, Einstein, omega 3 fatty acids, trees, carbon trading, deep sea vents, the kakapo bird, windmills, Shere Hite, photovoltaic cells, slime moulds, cosmology, warts, piles, Neptune, NASA, pus, a history of the penis, Kropotkin, hippos, meditation, schizophrenia, global wanning, knees-we have recordings of the world’s experts saying everything imaginable on all these subjects, from the oldest recording of Florence Nightingale in 1890 to Stephen Hawking talking through his voice-generator machine.
Each one-hour offering in our version of BabelFish would be a scripted story using these voices to give the essential, definitive briefing on the topic chosen. You would select it off the Web, download it as a podcast, and stick it in your ear to listen to it on a digital music player as you jog, stroll or clean out the shed.
The plan is to set up a team within the ABC led by seasoned producers. We would then use slave (student) labour and mine our archives (now rotting in cupboards) as source material. The students’ expertise with the technology would meet our experience with production and selection. They would learn journalism and broadcasting techniques; we would build a source of reference material for the world.
But isn’t it the case that most Australians can hardly identify a scientist beyond Einstein? In fact New Scientist magazine revealed in 2006 that 78 per cent of British people it polled couldn’t name a single living scientist. Of those who could, most named Stephen Hawking. But so what if they had never heard of Rutherford, Dirac, Bragg, Crowfoot Hodgkin, Goodall, Chandrasekhar, Venter, Dawkins, Burnet or Perutz? Is that a reason to give up and consign these names to oblivion? They are (or were) giants in their fields and compelling speakers. Their words on the nature of the world could move as well as edify.
Who would use such a resource? Well, given our stunning experience with podcasting over the last two years-with ABC programs being downloaded across the planet as if they were free banknotes-I suspect demand would be impressive. But imagine the new science students in China and India (400,000 engineers graduated in China last year, together with one million scientists) with their keenness to become fluent in English. Even a fraction of their growing number could amount to millions.
And BabelFish would grow. Once a one-hour topic was up, it would stay. Soon there would be a comprehensive list to tempt anyone. Say you wanted to get up to speed on the disposal of nuclear waste. Voices ranging from Robert Oppenheimer to Helen Caldicott and John Holdren could give background, followed by Ted Ringwood on the development of Synroc, followed by the latest assessments of hazards versus advantages. Within an hour (or less if you chose) you’d be in the loop.
I took the idea to colleagues around the world. They were universally enthusiastic. As broadcasters they felt it would give new life to their archives. Most science programs or reports begin in much the same way, explaining what a quark, a synchrotron or a guppy might be. Then comes the argument, then the payoff. If we combined our global storehouse of recordings, we could have a G8 of reliable, listenable, edifying e-science. The BBC agreed; so did CBC, PBS (USA), Scientific American, Radio NZ and a few others.
If BabelFish comes off, one day (communications, like science, deals with split seconds but moves managerially like continental drift) it will be but one example of how the future of media might be managed. It will offer you clear choices instead of an incomprehensible maze of options; interaction producing something more satisfyingly complex than what you started with; more democracy instead of simply more noise; decentralisation in place of mega-baronies; stillness where once there was turmoil.
In this way the next communications revolution will indeed be in step with transport, as Professor Hall has it. In future we shall be sitting smug in our village (or village-like suburb), in touch by remote control. At least, that’s the theory Isn’t it?
* * * *
In 1993 science fiction writer Samuel Delany decided to see what the 23rd Psalm would look like in 2093 based on trends forced by electronic communication habits. How would the pithy, almost anorexic word use of our hasty times change the florid language of the past? The result is shown below.
2093
I have a supervisor
I need nothing more.
My sleeping, my eating, my drinking
Is observed and controlled.
Even if threatened by death,
I need not fear.
I need not think.
Controls and aids are all around me.
I am fed.
My enemies starve while they watch me eat.
My head is rubbed like a pet!!
My water dish is full to overflowing.
My whole life I will frisk about the palace!!
So much for the abruptness of the late 21st century. Compare the King James Bible version:
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
He leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul: He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil:
For thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my
head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the
house of the Lord for ever.
Sublime.
* * * *
The Hunches of Nostradamus
2008 James Packer marries Elizabeth Murdoch (by arrangement through their brokers) to create the greatest media/gambling market at this end of the galaxy.
2009 Big Brother ‘final’ season adds spice by having one contestant with AIDS, one with Hepatitis A, B, and C and one with the gene for serial killing.
2010 ABC, in crisis, closes down Radio National, merges with SBS and restructures to add five extra layers of senior management.
2011 New technology allows viewers to bypass TV transmission and watch selected shows on the inside of eyelids. Over 400,000 episodes of The Bill and CSI made available.
2012 Device worn inside the nostril can receive phone calls, radio and stock options; to be stored in lower spinal cord, bypassing the brain.
2013 ITV in UK in controversy over The Bill showing non-simulated sex scenes and toilet close-ups while ignoring crime.
2014 Channel 9 sold to James Bond.
2015 Paris Hilton cloned.
2016 ABC closed.
2017 John Howard celebrates twenty years as PM by launching Cricket Channel.
2018 James Bazalgette, who saved London in the nineteenth century by inventing modern sewers, comes back from the dead to condemn his great-great-great (etc) grandson, who produced media sewage (Big Brother).
2019 New iPod is chip implanted in a baby’s brain. Wearer selects (limited) channels by twitching nose.
2020 Natasha Stott-Despoja becomes Australian PM. ABC reopened.
2. The Future of Science – The White Trash of the Pacific?
New ideas pass throug
h three periods:
1. It can’t be done.
2. It probably can be done, but it’s not worth doing.
3. I knew it was a good idea all along!
– Arthur C. Clarke
My father announced, ‘You’re going to do science.’ So that was that. It was the way things were done 50 years ago. I was thirteen and my life’s course was set.
Gwyn Williams was clear in his reasoning. Science was the means to build the Promised Land, and the British education system made you choose your specialty around puberty. Arts or sciences: the great divide. Accordingly, I joined the nerdy stream at my traditional grammar school, forsaking subjects I was best at-languages and art-to struggle with Wheatstone bridges and titration.
Gwyn’s reasoning wasn’t entirely askew. It was just four years after Watson and Crick (as well as Perutz and Kendrew) had published their sensational papers on the chemicals of life (DNA and haemoglobin), thus inventing the entirely new field of molecular biology; and it was 1957, when Sputnik was launched, starting the Space Age. Not a bad time to take up your test tubes. New Scientist magazine had just been launched, and the BBC carried science programs with the unmistakable brio of making history.
I coped with science at school. It was obvious who the ‘brains’ were. They seemed to know everything automatically. Author Bryan Appleyard has written of his own fury at the way his father would casually glance at problems set for homework and not only know the answers instantly but also imply that anyone with balls or gumption should do so too. Gwyn was the same. He had come first out of 2000 students at Cardiff University while at the same time working down the mines. I still remember my pink haze of panic when I was first asked to solve a problem-thinking it through didn’t arise. This was a macho test.
Years later I was aghast to hear the great chemist Professor George Porter say that his own, similar education ‘crippled’ his mind for much of his life. But how can you say you were disadvantaged when now you are a Nobel laureate, president of the Royal Society of London and member of the House of Lords? I asked him, dumbfounded. Because, he answered, from the age of fourteen he was given only chemistry. It was the narrow specialisation of our era. It took him years to try to put it right.
None of this mattered to me. I intuitively took my science education to be a preparation for life and not a job ticket. Scores of my friends have done the same. We I are well equipped to be journalists, broadcasters, in business, administrators, publishers and investors because we are grounded in a real world and not one entirely of cultural constructs.
In the 21st century much has changed. Science has been sidelined, whatever lip service politicians pay it. Science courses have been turned into box-ticking travesties, as ‘knowledge’ is tested on the conveyor belt of exams instead of through ideas-based essays, and the teachers struggle. How amazed I am now to recall the succession of Cambridge men with first-class degrees we had routinely placed before us as teachers at our humble red-brick Tooting Bee Grammar. In future, then, science needs to be rescued.
* * * *
There are five reasons why science is essential to the nation. They are:
1. Wealth creation.
2. Democracy.
3. Fun.
4. Quarantine.
5. To tell us who we are.
To elaborate…
* * * *
Wealth creation
This is the heading politicians think of first, so I’m putting it at No. 1. Many surveys have been done on the relationship between state-funded scientific research and patents registered. I tend to go by the one published through the National Science Foundation in the USA, which says 72 per cent of these ‘innovations’ are scientifically based. This is roughly the figure other surveys offer as well.
It’s a lot. Most authorities also believe that the best way to harness brilliance is not to tell scientists to go forth and make a better mousetrap. The best way is to foster basic research and encourage those clever enough to do it brilliantly. Results will follow. Two fellows whose work I admire have said as much: Tom Barlow, in his exciting book Australian Miracle, and Bill Gates, boss of Microsoft, who said ‘Hire the best people you can find and let them do what they want.’
This seems too much of a free ride for scientists so it doesn’t happen-especially in these times dominated by accountants sans frontières.
* * * *
Democracy
Since I came up with my list of five a few years ago, this second reason, which once puzzled the men in suits, has become more obvious. The Toowoomba debacle, in which residents, faced with an ill-conceived plebiscite, rejected the option of recycled water, is the most notorious example of democracy foiled by ignorance of science. Toowoomba faces a desiccated future. We citizens are also required to understand and make choices about everything from GM crops and stem cells to smart cards and nuclear power.
In the face of this brave new world of uncertainty, many are retreating into bovine credulousness, New Age ‘alternatives’ or a religions-based wholesale rejection of scientific ideas. It is not a coincidence that this rejection has parallels in the Middle East.
Unless the populace, here and abroad, gets wise enough about science to be able to choose its future, then, as the lady said, we’re in for a bumpy ride.
* * * *
Fun
Personally, I’d put this category first. How much delight is there in observing a starry sky, watching a bird make a tool, growing a crystal, curing warts, identifying a snake, using a microscope when you know what’s going on?
Science is dealing with what is around you-and inside you-not just a matter of curriculum. Curriculum is to science what a timetable is to the railways-a useful facet, not the main deal. Science is yours, not theirs. Your gut, your brain, your view of the cosmos, your understanding of how gravity makes a falling pudding splash.
Joining the scientific establishment is always an option, to increase your understanding. But no one thinks an appreciation of music automatically requires you to become a concert pianist or conductor. We all enjoy music in various ways. In the same fashion we can all enjoy nature. Doing so in an informed way is the essence of science.
* * * *
Quarantine
‘I say, chaps, let’s do some hunting. There aren’t any foxes in Australia, so let’s import some. Gadzooks!’
They did the same with cane toads, rabbits, stoats in New Zealand-and those dreaded Australian possums- lantana, killer grasses, exotic bivalves and much else, with awful consequences. The cost of weeds and feral animals has been astronomic.
Then there are the new products of science-the genetic engineering, the psychological treatments, the energy systems, the IT gear, the vaccines for pandemics, the surgical techniques. Who will decide whether they should be let loose in our society or kept away? If we do not have a cadre of experts and informed laypeople covering the field in these unpredictable times we shall be left vulnerable.
* * * *
To tell us who we are
Put it another way: science can tell us who we are not. We are not a separate creation from animals; blacks are not a different species; women are not stupider than men.
Our modern picture of who we are is fundamentally set by science. We no longer believe in witches, possession by the devil, an Earth-centred universe or miracles because science has alternative, deeply tested explanations. Our relatively recent understanding of Aboriginal history in Australia, going back 50,000 years instead of 5000, has helped changed the law, giving us the Mabo and Wik judgments, making Australia different, for better or worse.
We can also now be more forgiving about madness, even criminality. Brain states produced by chemicals or injury can produce predictable maladies. We know the forensic nature of ‘evil’.
Knowing who we are is essential to facing the future.
* * * *
These five reasons for doing science are unarguably vital to the national interest and crucial to each individua
l. How odd, therefore, that science is languishing both in the public mind and in terms of government support. Nearly every day brings another grim stat or gloomy pronouncement.
The first few days of 2007 offered the following. ‘Science scores mock clever country’ was the headline in The Australian on 2 January, over a story proclaiming that science courses at our universities are so unpopular that entry scores are below those for macramé and fashion design. Chief scientist Dr Jim Peacock was quoted as saying, ‘It’s depressing and worrying. We have to be concerned about the replacement of ageing researchers.’ This followed science minister Julie Bishop’s statement in 2006 that in five years we shall be 20,000 scientists short. ‘All this reinforces the need for a fundamental overhaul of the way science is taught in this country,’ editorialised The Australian. ‘Science is more than a cultural construct, it is a disciplined way of thinking that has the power to change the world.’
Two days later we were told, ‘The number of school students studying science across the nation has dropped by one-third in five years and the proportion of university graduates with a maths qualification is less than half the OECD average.’ The National Report on Schooling for 2005 indicated that the number of high schoolers opting for a science degree fell from 147,000 in 2000 to 107,000 in 2005.
‘What will happen if we fail to invest appropriately in higher education?’ I asked Dr John Yu, former Chancellor of the University of New South Wales and Australian of the Year. ‘We shall become the white trash of the Pacific,’ he answered without hesitation. (The increases announced in the federal budget are a welcome boost-a start, perhaps?)
None of this should be remotely surprising. I remember tripping along to the Cabinet room in Canberra twenty years ago at the invitation of Bob Hawke’s science minister Ross Free (himself a former science teacher). It was to discuss what became known as the ‘Nerds and Losers’ survey on the state of science in Australia and its future, so called because that’s what Australian school kids dubbed those few weirdos who opted for Science. Chuck Chunder!
Future Perfect Page 3
