New Media Reshaping the Public Understanding of Science

The Internet has been born (no longer than 50 years ago) from the cooperation of military and university research. The World Wide Web, service which is de facto incarnating the Internet of today, was invented by scientists in CERN, with the needs of academic papers, thorough collaboration and interconnection in mind. It would seem safe to assume that such a system of media would be enormously beneficial for science, inheriting its principles of peer-reviewing and contextualization.

And, without question, examples of such scientific uses of the Internet are numerous. “It would seem like a marriage made in cyber-heaven” (Hall 2006, 89). However, as it is often the case with analyzing new media landscape, the reality is quite complex, with antagonistic tendencies and multiple, competing, colliding and combining discourses of understanding science being present. And some of these trends suggest that new media can have unexpected effects on science news distribution, as well as perception of the science discourse itself.

In this essay we summarize the classic understanding of science, acknowledging its roots and objectives, and then observe how these could be supported by the vast capabilities of the new media. Subsequently, we briefly analyze few individual examples of different roles new media can play in both clarifiyng as well as obfucating the scientific findings to the public. Particularly, we explore the idea of mediocentric authors such as Neil Postman and Paul Carr.

The core principle of science

Although the term science could be understood quite broadly as any striving for knowledge, more useful definition for purposes of this paper is the one Neil Postman ascribes to Francis Bacon, who “first saw, pure and serene, the connection between science and the improvement of the human condition. The principal aim of his work was to advance the happiness of mankind, and he continually criticized his predecessors for failing to understand that the real, legitimate, and only goal of the sciences is the endowment of human life with new inventions and riches” (Postman, Technopoly 1993, 35). This utilitaristic characterization of science from the 1620s does not, of course, change the methodology of sciences of that time, but prepares the ground for subsequent centuries, for the rise of science “as the supporter of the capitalism”, which is “demonstrated to be a rational and liberal system of economic life” and where the “idea of continuous progress takes hold” (Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death 1987, 53).

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For thousands of years, many different methods, tools and approaches have been developed to apply the basic principle of science, which can be paraphrased as “ideas are tested by the experiment” (Munroe 2008). There is, however, rather profound change, both quantitative and qualitative, in the way scholars work and communicate in different eras. According to Postman, the “spread of typography culture kindled the hope that the world and its manifold mysteries could at least be comprehended, predicted, controlled. It is in the eighteenth century that science – the pre-eminent example of the analytic management of knowledge – begins its refashioning of the world” (Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death 1987, 53).

It is easy to see how the typographic age was beneficial for the academic doings. The distribution of literature became much easier, which brought the possibility of swift (or at least much swifter) peer-review process, which started as soon as the ninth century (Spier 2002) but became more of a norm in the 19th and 20th centuries. “Early peer review in scientific journal publishing was meant to augment editorial expertise rather than to exercise more conventionally understood modes of quality control” (Fitzpatrick 2009, 11), nevertheless, the idea of sharing the results of their research with community (as opposed to guard them from their competitors) has characterized the scientific discourse of last century. According to mediocentric theories and famous “medium is the message” notion (McLuhan 1994), this reliance on books has transformed the whole Western society.

Why is Internet worse than a book?

It is not only Neil Postman who gets nostalgic when recalling the golden age of education, the age of books. Nicholas Carr indicates that “it is revealing, and distressing to compare the cognitive effects of the Internet with those of an earlier information technology, the printed book. Whereas the Internet scatters our attention, the book focuses it. Unlike the screen, the page promotes contemplativeness” (Carr 2010). He further explores the idea of Michael Merzenich who claims that human brains are not used to the long attention that is required to read a book, and that this prolonged state of focus has been the result of multi-generation training in literacy.

This literacy, argues Postman, is disappearing in the age of television, a medium that might be characterized by the television commercial, the “most peculiar and pervasive form of communication to issue forth from the electric plug” (Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death 1987, 129). Carr, being aware of the new clip culture of YouTube, of the endless clicking and of the omnipresent information overload, states it rather blatantly: the new media “make us shallow.”

Science, as politics, can fall prey to the shallow discourse that turns actors into commonly understood heroes of media narratives: doctors will “fight” disease, mathematicians must “break” the record and statisticians will “predict” the future…

Positive effects of new media

Of course, as is often the case with new media, we should not expect “a single answer to the question of how media transform” the society (Couldry 2008) or the discourse. The author of this essay has argued previously that new media have double-edged capabilities that are currently being explored in various ways (Kasík, Blogs entering Czech media 2008).

One such characteristic is the openness of the Web, the fact that anyone with the access to the Internet connection and (now) basic skills has the immediate opportunity to view (and comment on) tremendously various sources of knowledge, an unprecedented possibility that cannot be overlooked. Neither can be disputed the benefits of accelerated communication, allowing faster fact-checking, interpersonal communication across countries, and opinion exchange.

Opposing Carr’s pessimistic view, Clay Shirky, too, alludes to the “scientific revolution (that) was peer review, the idea that science was a collaborative effort that included the feedback and participation of others. Peer review was a cultural institution that took the printing press for granted as a means of distributing research quickly and widely, but added the kind of cultural constraints that made it valuable.” According to Shirky, “(w)e are living through a similar explosion of publishing capability today, where digital media link over a billion people into the same network. This linking together in turn lets us tap our cognitive surplus, the trillion hours a year of free time the educated population of the planet has to spend doing things they care about. In the 20th century, the bulk of that time was spent watching television, but our cognitive surplus is so enormous that diverting even a tiny fraction of time from consumption to participation can create enormous positive effects.” (Shirky 2010)

Hypertextuality and full-text search – for better or worse

Let us contemplate hypertextual links, as an example of a property rather characteristic for the new media. Proposed in famous essay by Vannevar Bush (As We May Think 1945), hypertext allows the interconnection of different texts or multimedia works through links, simplifying the access to cited documents, extra information or perhaps opposing views. “Standing on the shoulders of giants,” i.e. building on or reacting to the results of previous research and findings, has always been the foundation of scientific works. Even though links can be misused to take things out of context, creating isolated networks of self-supporting evidence, or diverse the attention of reader, overall, it would be difficult to dispute the benefits of the ability to reference other materials with unprecedented precision and ease.

Full-text search, greatly benefiting from the aforementioned hypertextuality, changed the face of new media in the late 1990s. Larry Page, co-founder of Google, saw the links as citations in scientific articles, carrying notion of importance (Vise 2006, 37). Search allows anyone to find exact, extremely specific piece of information on any given subject, in matter of seconds. Still, it may partly be a victim of its own success. It is easy, thanks to our positive experience with search engines, to assume that anything that is not considered important by the ranking algorithm is, indeed, not worthy of our attention, while it may simply be the case of self-perpetrating importance. Search engines also feed our tendency to “assimilate new information in a way that confirms (our) view of the world” (Sunstein 2006, 139), known as confirmation bias. This is something that can affect both scientists in their search for supporting evidence as well as members of public, offering them a natural option of decontextualizing information according to their current opinions.

Theoretically, it would be hard to imagine a better time for scientific education for broad masses, since every piece of information can be explained on several levels, linked together in a useful, searchable way. Yet at the same time, hypertext and search are also the reason why conspiracy theories (such as those persisting that men never walked on the Moon) are more wide-spread than ever; the new media, it is clear, allow people to isolate themselves from disapproving opinions, bestowing the confirmation bias with unforeseen possibilities.

The Library, the Market, and the Pub

To contrast different approaches to knowledge, let us consider three typical environments, be it today or in the Middle Ages: the Library, the Market, and the Pub.

Being an institution of education and, at least to some extent, exclusivity, the Library guards not only who can access its premises, but mainly what views, sources and materials are accessible on its grounds. The character of this filtering is best summarized by a simple sentence: “In the academic world, the published word is invested with greater prestige and authenticity than the spoken word. What people say is assumed to be more casually uttered than what they write. The written word is assumed to have been reflected upon and revised by its author, reviewed by authorities and editors.” (Postman, Technopoly 1993, 21)

The Market is driven by different powers, the economic forces of demand, supplies, regulations and advertising. Sellers come to offer their products or services, courting customers and competing for their attention, while street artists are entertaining the bystanders.

The Pub might be a version of public sphere, “reflecting public’s representatives” (Ferree, et al. 2002), where every member of the society can come to socialize. The debate led in the pub, generally, will be different from debates led in other places, precisely since the objective of such a debate is different.

It is clear that the World Wide Web and its virtual spaces are wide enough to fit all these three structures, and many others. The rules of communication, goals and methods are different, and are coexisting together, using the very same media platforms. To understand how the discourse of science is changing on-line, just imagine a scientist struggling to explain an intricate concept to a group of intoxicated diners while they are haggling over the price of fortune-bringing amulets.

“Internet is the reflection of society,” says Vinton Cerf, who is credited with co-creating the core network principles of this network. "If you stand in front of a mirror and you don't like what you see, it does not help to fix the mirror” (Ribeiro 2007). However, as was demonstrated in this essay, new media (being no exception to previous media technologies) cannot be perceived as neutral technology, and it is worth noticing how they shape society’s understanding of science.

New tools, new possibilities

While it is clear that new media have several negative effects on the way people perceive broader concepts and become shallower without realizing that they become shallower (Kasík 2010), the new media were not yet given enough time to demonstrate their powers and react to these negative effects (Shirky 2010).

There are new tools to help scientist communicate with broader audience without sacrificing too much of the complexity, be it through computer games, new ways of utilizing blogs, podcasts and wikis or better marketing the products of scientific research (Timmer 2008).

Summarizing the optimistic view, Steven Pinker (Mind Over Mass Media 2010) states that “(t)he new media have caught on for a reason. Knowledge is increasing exponentially; human brainpower and waking hours are not. Fortunately, the Internet and information technologies are helping us manage, search and retrieve our collective intellectual output at different scales, from Twitter and previews to e-books and online encyclopedias. Far from making us stupid, these technologies are the only things that will keep us smart.”

(c) Pavel Kasík, 2010, kasikp@gmail.com

Charles University in Prague

Faculty of Social Sciences

Media and Communication Studies

 

References

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Start-up presentation

Believe it or not, I've became a start-up runner. With my friend Dan we started a website Vizitka.cz that allows you to design your card very easily and quickly. I try to follow the guidelines introduced in Nudge and Paradox of Choice, so the whole process of designing the card is really simple and straightforward.

Today I had the opportunity to present my project to the start-up community around WebExpo, for which I am grateful. Thanks all for the great ideas, inspiration and support. And also thanks to the founder of Jizdomat.cz for his inspiring presentation and interesting start-up.

Personal business cards - design your own

I am currently looking into business card design. With my friend Dan, we want to develop a great system to design your own personal card on-line and popularize the idea of personal cards.

Nice article about personal business cards is in TIME:

For young job-hoppers, a calling card offers not only a sense of permanence but also a chance for self-expression.

But personal cards (in Czech: osobní vizitka) are not only for job-seeking people, but also for students, mums, travelers, enthusiasts, freelancers, party-planners, people who sport, geeks, photographers... We believe that in our gallery of card designs, there is a right card for you.

Of course, osobni.vizitka.cz are not the first project like this. We found great inspiration and affirmation in projects like zazzle.de, moo minicards, squizcards etc. But vizitka.cz aims to be more receptive to users' needs.

The best clips of Daily Show

I recently started a new blog about The Daily Show. The show has been on for more than 10 years, but I only discovered it recently and now I'm digging through its archive. All the funny, interesting or somehow useful videos I bookmark for later, and subsequently post on my blog about Daily Show.
There is also the aspec of writing about Daily Show from Czech point of view.
And I try to put together some consistent pieces as well, for example coverage of Al Gore talking with Jon Stewart, which is also combined with some of his Futurama videos.
I just love the videos starring John Hodgman. He is the "PC guy" from Mac and PC commercials (mocked upon in Net Neutrality explained by John Hodgman, and a brilliant speaker and comedian.
Hope you will like that blog, I sure hope it will draw some visitors, but if it doesn't, it still serves to me as the collection of best Daily Show clips.

What I like to read and why

Ever since I was a child, I was fascinated by reading. It appeared as a magic to me, being able to get words out of the paper without other people. I remember that I memorized a book of short poems by Josef Lada, where pictures on one page corresponded with text on the other side. So I was faking the reading at the age of three by pointing my finger at the verses and saying them out loud, not knowing the symbols. I think first thing I was actually reading were comics “Čtyřlístek”, and this is the kind of literature I still enjoy the most.

Well, not really. The true is, I have met the more serious stuff quite soon, and reading became my obsession in the primary and secondary school. And until now it still is one of my most favorite activities, especially in my solitude and contemplative times. I used to read anything, anywhere and anytime, really, any printed or non-printed text was sufficient. Lately, maybe in my last years in high school, I realized how different qualities of content or form are available. Above all, after two years of attempts I finally could understand texts written in other language, namely in English, and I found out how different and yet the same this foreign attitude towards words and speech is. I guess this is one of the worlds I am exploring right now, and hope that I will never feel I have explored it enough.

I can divide my reading in several categories. People who know me also know, that humorous and entertaining literature of all kinds have its steady place in my daily schedule. In this area I prefer something I call second-thoughts humor, as the opposite of jokes without background. I admire the skills of writers like Dave Barry, who can keep in mind several wits and serve them gradually through the whole column, yet finishing with something from the beginning of the article, familiar to the reader already. I always enjoy observing him breaking the cliché of regular rigid sentence-building and making fun of common predictive structures.

This is also why I respect Terry Pratchett so much. First I thought he was just a well-known author of easily understandable fantasy books for teenagers, but I had to change my mind. Sure, some people can read Pratchett’s books without even realizing there is some other level in them, but once I at least partly understood how he uses the wit in order to raise some deep questions, I had to admit that he really is a philosopher. As I mentioned the questions, I probably ought to say that he does not humiliate his readers by giving the easy answers right away. As to say, the moral of the story is in the story. I am not implying that he is some philosopher with new system of beliefs and disbeliefs, I think that he merely presents alternative attitude towards life, imagination and understanding people, helps us to discover what we already know about life. And, of course, his books are much wittier than anything you might see on TV.

So much for humor, at least for now. When I started to read literature of the 19th and early 20th century, I was very impressed by its directness and potential. Authors like Dostojevskij, Hemingway, Wilde, Dickens, Sartre, Kafka and others really opened me the gate of other literature, so different from novels written before. Impact of stories is multiplied by excellent usage of the language and immediate feeling of presence allows us, the readers, to become part of the story (or, more important, they offer us the option to make the experience part of ourselves). Also books form people like Exupery, Fulghum, Hesse, Bulgakov, Lewis, Orwell or Heller are still inviting me further into fantastic world of literature. And I know that there is much more, still waiting for me to dive into. I hope I will have time for reading at least what my favorite people recommend me to read.

Recently, I am studying some philosophical articles, essays about different subjects or even scientific studies about people and their attitude towards communication and their lives in nowadays society. I read some theological texts, long and short, Christian, agnostics and often even ignorant; I was often surprised how much can be written and how much effort we can put in understanding that, how thin the line is between realizing something precious for our lives and just letting it pass by, thus missing our opportunity that might not come again… And beside these, I read way too much quotes, encyclopedic articles etc. You could say I am trying to analyze humor, or understand it better.

I think here is what I like most about books – it allows people to share experiences, opens new possibilities and actually brings real people together, since it influences our “real life” as well. Through books we are able to explore ourselves, train our imagination and empathy, and learn how to handle other points of view. It is almost as good as a dialog with close person.

And surprisingly, that might be the exact reason why books are such a great things. They are alive. There is someone, who spent his or her time writing the book, and I think that is what counts. When I asked myself the question how I would differentiate what is worthy of my time reading it and what is not, I came up with this answer: Whatever stems from deep of the authors mind and heart. Whatever they spent their time writing for others in order to tell something they wanted to tell. Whatever was written to share some amazement or realization, where author does not just write to show off or gain credit, but really wants to give something special.
I want to be ready and listen to that.

World at the beginning of the 21st century

(Essay)

The epoch we’re living in is very important and special. And I don’t want to imply that 21st century is somehow more important than the previous, regarding, for example, the population growth or the boom of new inventions. I just want to say that 21st century is very special for us, because it is our epoch, the time period in which we are (most likely) going to spend the rest of our life. And therefore we want and need to think it is special. People are often even ready to believe that the life is going to change completely, thanks to the achievements of science or just simply because of the unstoppable progress of civilizations.

And actually, that seems to be true. At the first glance (and maybe few others) at least, it truly appears that our world and our contemporary way of living has few in common with the lives of our ancestors. Think of the differences for a moment… Technologies enabling us to communicate overseas within seconds, public transportation bringing the whole world to us, massive colossus of information available just few clicks away, more free time than we ever had and even more way how to spend it – that sounds like whole new planet, if you compare it to the world where most of the people hardly knew what is the name of their landlord, they heard of some king of their but never really needed to know anything about him, because all they had to do is to survive, work and survive, and probably have some fun, which, compared to our leisure time, seems tediously dull.

Without too broad generalizing we might say that we consider the 21st century to be the peak of civilization. That, of course, depends on the gauges we are using, and if we want count in the respectable ancient civilizations, it’s not that easy to judge this, but I think on some level it is assumable. If nothing else, the various possibilities of communications all around the planet is irrefutable – and it really has direct impact on our daily lives. The last two centuries progressively prepared the way for nowadays media culture: ever since the penny-press broke the barrier of easily approachable daily portion of text for broad-spectrum audience and later the radio learned people to passively receive stream of information, ever since the TV nailed the whole families to their couches regularly, media seem to change the society completely.

Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan saw this as the crucial cause of change (not only) in out times. His famous quote “The medium is the message“ emphasizes the fact that what is transported by the medium (book, telephone, web etc.) is not that important for learning about certain civilization as the medium itself. Supporting this claim by historical evidence and research, he continued by studying recent media and even forecast the future by saying that "the new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village." Well, given that this was written in 1962, he definitely had some insight. Especially we who are living in advanced countries have no doubt that World Wide Web, mobile phones or e-mails considerably affect our daily lives.

The opportunities are many times greater as regards getting specific knowledge or piece of information. Without special training, any student can find out what is the capital of Assyria (among other far more interesting things) just using his internet browser and full-text search engine, without even leaving his home or opening a book. Academic research hasn’t even discovered all the new possibilities new technologies opened to it. And we are not talking about commercial use of these. Advertisement has entered into a solid agreement with all kinds of media, making them cheaper, although intoxicating them with noise. Free market profits from this information-freedom and inexhaustible variety of choices.

And yet… Does more choices mean better choice? Do these technology achievements really change that much in our lives? Or maybe the question is: should they?

Sometimes I wonder how easy it would be in more simple way. Work and rest, to put it bluntly. Just like in the old times, right? We wouldn’t know, what happened in China, or what is the stock market value of “PIXR”, there would be not many ways to get in touch with our relatives living their lives in different town, but it would be so much easier to stay tuned, to stay in focus, to keep our minds clear. That is especially hard now, being literally attacked by messages of all kinds.

All the possibilities can cloud up what is important in our lives and lives of people who are close to us. Cold technology can replace a lot of our interaction with others, but is that to be considered the good thing? We are, after all, physical beings, and using our feet and hands is not an inappropriate action. Saving time by working faster and more efficient for spending more time by trying to fill our desires here and there? Sometimes it feels like detaching ourselves from the life, becoming truly virtual, meaning not computer-based, but merely not that real. I am sure that the essence of human life did not change. We are still people. We just don’t often realize what that means any more. That’s what makes me sad – the alleged welfare and variety of choices finally lead to skepticism and relativism.

That many options everywhere – it makes it harder to see where we are, what we are, what do we need and how do we want to spend our life. Although that hasn’t changed much within last centuries, has it? The tools and appearances are hugely different, but it is still only cover which makes it harder to see what’s underneath. It is still people who are going to live in this new century. In some ways we have it easier, in other ways harder. It’s called life.

"There are no passengers on spaceship Earth. We are all crew."
Marshal McLuhan

Linux is Not Windows - great article

This is probably the best article comparing operating systems Linux and Windows: linux.oneandoneis2.org/... . Unlike those people, who will try to pesuade you that Linx is the only way to use computer how it was intended, this text shows you how differently particular tasks in both systems are done. And by several really nice parables you come to understand, that there are really more ways how to use the comp and that what suits you might not suit others. Like vim, for example, tho most sofisticated and crazy text editor I know:),Well, I gotta say I was sure to get Linux and start to use it. Now I might be reluctant about that a bit. But I'm getting it anyway, since you can carry it around on USB flash disk. About these "portable aplications" you can read in my next spot.

Read more at linux.oneandoneis2.org/...