New Media!

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy shared my quantum dots story with its Twitter followers today. I thought I should catch that tweet and put it on the blog before it faded away into Twitter oblivion. Like catching a firefly in a jar.

Whether or not I, as an ethical journalist, should relish this occurrence, is beside the point.

In other news, Rolling Stone just changed the world.

Data Viz

As this really smart Economist piece points out, we suddenly live in a vast universe of data, but most of it is just piling up because we don't yet know how to "extract wisdom" from it.

Well, in my experience, wisdom often comes from visualization, which is why I think data visualization is an essential piece of the new media DNA. A big part of the future of journalism, says Jay Rosen, is explanation. Context! Data visualization is pure explanation, pure context, instant wisdom.

Here's a perfect example. One of the major narratives designed to undermine renewable energies is is that they only exist because of a huge amount of federal financial assistance. That is true, but it's leaving out a big piece of the story. If a reporter relies only on that narrative he or she is doing a disservice to the reader. A story about subsidies for renewables is not giving the reader enough context if it does not mention that fossil fuels get much MORE federal assistance. And this handy little pie chart can make us instantly wise to the fact!


(source: Environmental Law Institute)

What is the future of data visualization as web journalism content? What was that thing that Buzz Lightyear said?

No, really though, projections are always tough. But I think it's a safe bet that data viz is gonna sell. Swing over to Katie Peek's blog, and I'm sure she can fill you in better than I can.

McEwan

Via the Guardian, the news is that Ian McEwan is about to release a new book about a solar energy scientist. I've only read one book from McEwan, and it blew my mind.

The author says he had wanted to write about climate change for a long time, but, like many frustrated journalists today, just couldn't find the right angle.

"I couldn't see a way in. A subject so weighted with moral and political value is not helpful to a novel. I couldn't see a way of making it come alive."

McEwan's idea-bulb finally lit up while he was in the arctic for a meeting between artists and scientists. He says he was inspired by the juxtaposition of the idealistic evening discussion and the "chaos of the equipment room."

Politically, he remains "baffled" by the exaggerations of those who would like to paint the East Anglia email situation as a game-changing scandal, but his book research did end up changing his views on nuclear power.

"We just don't have anything else that can run our cities on a windless night in February." Better nuclear energy than coal, he said. "It is rare that virtue and necessity collide. Sooner or later we're going to have to find a new energy source for mankind."

Preferably sooner. Stay tuned.

"We were after the holy grail. And if we didn't get that we didn't care."

Michael Kanellos, the skeptical dude in the 60 Minutes piece and the editor-in-chief of Greentechmedia, pointed his pocket camera at K.R. Sridar and asked all the questions 60 Minutes should have. Science journalism!



Here's my existential question: Energy is how we move and stay warm. Nothing is more important than fuel. We have fought wars over fuel, and will continue to do so. Considering the ENORMITY of the fossil fuel conundrum this planet faces, how is this video not front page news? This is a man, backed by $400 million from the most famous VC firm in Silicon Valley, claiming he just invented the holy grail. Why don't we care?

This is a huge deal, and not just for technology junkies and aspiring energy reporters.

Notable moments:

"We knew what we were after. We were after the holy grail. And if we didn't get that we didn't care." --Sridar

Kanellos: "I heard you had backlog of a billion dollars in orders."
Sridar: "Uh, no comment on that."

Blah Blah Blah Bloom Box

Here's the first piece of content I'm going to talk about.

Throughout this piece, there is a casual implication that the fuel cell is a new invention, which couldn't be further from the truth.

The segment with Michael Kanellos of Greentechmedia.com was by far the most informative part, especially when he said fuel cells were "like the divas of industrial equipment" that engineers have been trying to make work since the 1830s. His skepticism of the dazzling new box was refreshing.

Still, I would guess the takeaway for the typical viewer is that Bloom Energy CEO K.R. Sridar is a genius -- a mad scientist whose knowledge is other-worldy, and inherently inaccessible to the feeble minds of nonscientists. And this is sad, because even though energy production is incredibly expensive, is actually a fairly simple concept, thanks to the wonderful Law of Conservation of Energy.

The real question, which the piece fails to answer (I'm not sure the producers even knew to ask it) is simple: How is Bloom's fuel cell different from existing models? One of the things that has kept fuel cell divas prohibitively expensive is that researchers have only been able to get them to work by using expensive catalysts (the material that drives the energy-producing chemical reaction inside the cell), usually platinum.

Did Sridar's group find a new, cheaper catalyst? Cause that would be a big deal. But all we are told is that he uses beach sand for something, paints the disks green and black (WHY?), and that, instead of platinum, Bloom uses a "cheap metal alloy." There are lots of "cheap metal alloys." And what is meant by cheap?

Another important idea that gets minimal explanation in this peice is that distributed energy is ideal. Placing energy sources in the vicinity of the facilities they power would be a significant improvement over transporting coal from a mine to a coal-fired power plant, burning it, and then transmitting the electricity it through power lines. All of that takes energy -- the very thing we are trying to save. If something like the Bloom Box proves it can work (for a long time!), and can compete with solar, wind, and fossil fuels at the energy marketplace, it could solve some real problems.

But I'm not convinced that will happen. In fact, the only thing this video convinced me is that 60 Minutes doesn't mind airing infomercials. And the urgency of the global energy dilemma doesn't leave us much time for those.

Preemptive FAQ

Q: What is the point of this project?
A: This virtual space is a requirement for my graduate school seminar called "Entrepreneurial Journalism." Beyond that, it's inspired by the idea that humans have the capacity to completely re-imagine things.

At the moment, thoughtful people are re-imagining all kinds of things. For example, synthetic biologists are re-imagining energy production, while creative young journalists are busy re-imagining the news media.

"All I'm saying is, free your mind," said my professor Adam Penenberg (an entrepreneurial journalist himself) in class last week, "You can create a new art form."

So I guess the point is I'd like to try and do that.

Q: WTF does "meta-morph" mean?
A: Meta-morph is a made-up verb, built out of two conceptual bricks: metamorphosis and metacognition.

Brick 1, Metamorphosis: Today's technology allows individuals to mine vast amounts of discreet, meaningful packets of information, and instantly distribute them throughout multiple extensive social networks. It's too early to tell what it all means exactly, but one thing is for sure: as the way we research, communicate, and collaborate transforms, our brains and minds are changing in response. Our individual and collective thought processes are undergoing some sort of metamorphosis. What will climb out of the cocoon?

Brick 2, Metacognition: In this February 2009 article from Seed, science writer Jonah Lehrer explains how the human tendency to think about how you think has "immense practical value." In fact, some researchers believe if we examine our tendencies, we may be able to figure out how to avoid certain types of seemingly unavoidable mistakes. As Lehrer puts it, "Although the mind is full of flaws, we can learn to outsmart them."

So how do the bricks come together? In a theory: to be keenly aware of the strengths, weaknesses, and idiosyncrasies of the mind (individual or collective), is to be better equipped to re-imagine -- and then to meta-morph -- the way it makes decisions, especially given the vast information stores and transformative communications technology that can be applied toward this goal.

This project is a multimedia-based attempt to apply this theory practically, and to show how it manifests itself in the real world four-way intersection of science, business, politics, and journalism. I guess we'll have to see what happens.

If this post strikes you as mere psychobabble, don't be discouraged. From here on out it's about the content. This was just the concept car.

Meta-morph it.

(Photo Credit: chekabuje, Flickr)