Those things that can be said now, have been said, endlessly. I don’t pretend that among the few thoughts offered here there is anything new. It’s just that, like so many people, I grew up with the Apollo space program that put Man on the Moon, and the shuttle program that put up a permanent station in space. It seemed reasonable to believe that humans venturing into space were just part of the natural progress of the world.

Then over the years I learned something: Space exploration is roughly two-thirds politics. (I already knew there is nothing very natural about politics.)

It’s two-thirds politics because somebody has to pay for space exploration. Space exploration, especially manned space exploration is, to no surprise, very expensive. It is not only expensive but in all honesty with manned space exploration there is relatively little payback. It is so expensive and unprofitable that for the most part only governments have the money for it – if they have the money for it at all. That’s where the politics comes in. Space exploration from the beginning had to compete with other uses of government money. Typically a relatively large chunk was available for military space projects, almost all unmanned. This is not only true for the U.S. but also China and Russia. The non-military chunk of money depended on general budget allocations, which in turn depended on the political clout of the principle contractors that benefited from space exploration. This was and is a natural field for political sensitivity to economic conditions, bureaucratic infighting, and geopolitics.

I also came to realize that space exploration isn’t all about science and even less about advancing the story of mankind; except, of course, when it suits the narrative. That narrative is also for the most part political: The Soviets beat the Americans into orbit. It was a black eye for America. So America launches all-out man on the Moon project. Then the Soviets spend themselves into catastrophe trying to keep up. That’s a narrative. Occasionally the narrative is about the science, as for example the magnificent Cassini-Huygens space probes to the Saturn system. Manned space flight, however, was generally encased in a politicized narrative.

This leads to the snafu known as the American space shuttle program. I won’t repeat the history here, except to say that the shuttle program was an American project envisioned as an economical way to build and supply the International Space Station (ISS). It turned out to be adequate for building and supplying the space station, however it was anything but economical. It also blew up twice, killing people in dreadfully spectacular fashion. For those who defend the shuttle program, I have sympathy, but the fact is the shuttle program was ended years ago by the Bush administration because its thirty year old technology cost too much to operate. Now the ISS is supplied by rockets and other equally hoary, but cheaper, Soyuz technology of the Russians. This is such a rich irony considering the original political narrative.

For now human exploration of space is caught in the cracks between tight money in national budgets, the risk and cost of hurling people into space, the ambitious but nascent nationalism of the Chinese space program, and perhaps the desuetude of the world’s populations about space (it’s been boring for quite a while). What used to be front page drama (good and bad) is now part of the usual squabbling, small-beer routine of national politics – and not just in the United States.

With few exceptions, most nations have come to the conclusion that unmanned space exploration (robotic probes) does more for less. This has always been true and those nations constrained by finances and/or complex politics have eschewed manned projects for a long time. The exceptions have been the Russians for a while, the Americans, and the International Space Station, which though primarily American and Russian, has many participating countries, and now the Chinese.

The Chinese space program has focused on manned space flight almost exclusively. Publicly announced plans include a Chinese space station and a Chinese presence on the Moon. Whether the Chinese can accomplish this in the roughly twenty year time frame they announced is an open question. If they can do it, and so far it looks like they can, it may mean the rejuvenation of the ‘space race.’ Interestingly, however, their plans have so far failed to move the Americans, Europeans or Japanese toward any kind of counter-program. In some respects, the politics of space are obviously not what they used to be.

Meanwhile, private enterprise is getting into space, literally and figuratively. Notice, however, that the efforts are almost exclusively led by a club of people who formerly worked for the American space agency NASA or its contractors. Notice too that the companies run by these people are very small, barely equal to the payroll of a single NASA department. When big corporations get into the mix, then perhaps that will be a sign of potential profits. Until then, commercially it seems like a billionaire’s hobby club. That’s okay, but hard to believe it is leading any time soon to large numbers of people enjoying a vacation in space (or some such thing).

Until the day it becomes possible to ship bulk freight – including people – to and from space at rates within spitting distance of earthside shipping, the true habitation of space, even near-space, just isn’t going to happen. So far that technology eludes us. There is, in fact, a huge gulf between the grand projects (manned trips to Mars, a Moon settlement) and the ability to keep even the ISS usefully in orbit. I put it this way: The infrastructure for settlement and exploration of space is still on the ground, on Earth. Until a significant part of that infrastructure exists in space, outside Earth’s gravity well, the space adventure will continue to be hobbled by expense and unprofitability.

So I guess from my perspective, the final flight of the American shuttle program, while a symbol of almost catastrophically poor planning on the part of the Americans, is mostly indicative of a long transition period in the history of humanity in space. It will be a period – probably decades – where economics and domestic politics will usually trump grand accomplishments. Perhaps the Chinese can pull off something dramatic, but even the Chinese will need to find new technologies to make their achievements more than a one-off PR coup. The search for those technologies is likely to be something of a slog, hampered all the way by all the above mentioned economic and political factors. Yes, for those of us who grew up with the Apollo program and the promise of the International Space Station, this is a let-down. Let us hope that the unmanned scientific exploration of space continues to provide the few bright beacons of discovery that keep our interests up.

There are very few countries where it is not considered legitimate for government to have a role in Internet access. There are crooks and terrorists to catch, lots of them, and they all hang out on the Internet just waiting for government sleuths to ferret them out. Snark aside, this kind of on-line police work exists and is useful. However, while there’s no way to know, I’d wager that a lot more money is spent by governments to monitor political dissidents and various political conspiracies than is spent on typical police work. Much of this is done behind the cover of ‘normal’ government regulation and surveillance.

Of course, what is ‘normal’ varies, just as forms of government vary. Tapping the Internet remains technologically challenging for many governments. The rapid growth of phone-based satellite and Wi-Fi delivered Internet access complicates the picture for would-be snoops. Politically, it is sometimes inexpedient or even illegal for government to undertake mass monitoring of Internet traffic. So between the costs, technical difficulty and political/legal barriers many governments have gone to some effort to do what in many other circumstances they refuse to do: They’re learning from other countries’ experience and using another country’s model, China’s.

The model that seems to be spreading most rapidly is China’s. With more Internet users than there are people in the United States (380 million +), the thinking goes, “If China can keep a reign on the Internet, then any country can.” The Chinese model, which is of course unofficial, is relatively simple to outline:

1. Monitor, filter, and analyze Internet traffic. While the volume of Internet traffic is immense, technology for accessing, filtering, and analyzing has steadily become better and less expensive. The results are not ‘perfect’ from a surveillance point of view, but this is a game of percentages. Capturing and accurately analyzing around 50% of the traffic usually provides enough of a picture to be effective. Smart countries pick their surveillance targets with care and don’t waste resources.

2. Create laws and regulations that either directly or indirectly legitimizes surveillance, censorship and punitive action. It’s easier, even in a police state, to justify Internet intervention on the basis of what appear to be reasonable laws or regulations. These are often grounded on ‘moral and religious standards,’ ‘disturbance of the peace,’ and ‘fairness in business’ tenets sufficiently broad and fuzzy to cover any situation. Most of them are guaranteed to hold up in court, if indeed, there is any pretense of working within the law.

3. Enlist the support of Internet users. The business of co-opting the users to help monitor government targets takes on two main forms: Paid informers whose business it is to infiltrate and observe target activity, and voluntary monitoring, often within the proceedings of social networking, forums, blogs and other relatively informal areas where information is exchanged.

4. Establish a pattern for selectively blocking, apprehending, and intimidating Internet sources. Technically this is simply another side of monitoring and analyzing traffic. National firewalls, selective site blocking, ISP control (as in nationally owned access), and selective content blocking are typical censorship techniques. In more belligerent countries, the technical aspect is buttressed with harassment, arrest and other forms of intimidation to get compliance. In general, however, the Chinese model prefers to have ‘voluntary compliance.’

5. Prepare action protocols for emergency or ‘campaign’ style blocking. As has been dramatically demonstrated by the recent revolts in the Middle East, governments see the need to be prepared for quick and massive action in the face of uprisings. This calls for relatively elaborate and funded plans for emergency situations. The emergencies can also be natural disasters, so the plans can be made to do double duty. China has reportedly been rapidly putting into place such plans as a reaction to recent events.

If these seem like a formidable array of tools for governments to control the flow of information on the Internet, that’s because it is. It’s not perfect by a long shot, to repeat, this is a numbers game. Catch enough content (and people) to make enforcement a real threat; that will inhibit activity, possibly reducing it to ineffectiveness. That’s the goal.

It should be clear that this goal is not limited to authoritarian regimes. Many western-style democracies have all or some of the China model in place – usually minus the more brutal police action.

There is something of a technology race, remindful of security hackers versus security software (pretty much the same approach to the technology). But when it comes to government interference in the Internet, the ground-rules are not fair, in fact those who choose to fight are more like the one legged man in an ass kicking contest.

Those who wish to get around government censorship and prevention have three big allies: Volume, technical options and deception. Two of these often work together. Huge volumes of Internet traffic make it easier to hide risky communication through deception. One approach that is gaining favor is called steganography, or hiding information in plain sight. It’s one of the oldest tricks in the spies’ playbook. Unlike encryption, which tends to call attention to itself, steganography embeds the message in what appears to be normal language. There is even publicly available software, such as the academic project Collage, to help conceal the messages in typical social networking chatter, email, and tweets.

Another approach is based on a system of proxy servers, fake routers, and other technical means for concealing the actual flow of traffic. Somewhat like the Internet itself, these systems are designed so that if one node is compromised the messages can be rerouted through other nodes. This approach is very popular, often used more in the service of accessing pornography than for political purposes. Many of the proxy server ‘workarounds’ are more vulnerable than people think, but there are sophisticated approaches that are difficult for governments to detect.

The problem is, whether some kind of message concealment or technical fakery, these approaches are not for the un-initiated. They require a considerable amount of expertise, patience and often money – all of which may be in short supply. I’m not trying to be pessimistic, but the advantage in the struggle for freedom of Internet access and information goes to the determined government. In most countries, most people, most of the time will not be able (or even want to) circumvent government censorship.

And the point is? Focus on #2 above in the China model. It is almost impossible to stop governments from exercising the technical aspects of Internet monitoring and censorship, nor will most people be able to resist or even want to resist the approved channels of Internet use. What needs to happen is that laws and regulations, which aid and abet Internet censorship, are not enabled – either in the first place or they are repealed. Of course, in many countries this is a pipe dream. Of course, it’s hard enough to do this even in countries such as the United Kingdom or the United States. However, it remains perhaps the best method to take the teeth out of Internet censorship. (Good luck and keep trying.)

Related articles/posts:

SciTechStory: Government censorship on the rise
The Guardian: Silence of the dissenters: How south-east Asia keeps web users in line
The Economist: A new way of beating the web’s censors
Technology Review: Censorship Circumvention Tools Aren’t Widely Used

In February, 2011 half the population of the United States gathered around TV screens, gorged on fat-foods and swilled beer, while watching a sports contest of epic proportions called the Superbowl. Also in February for three consecutive days several million Americans watched a television game show called Jeopardy! It too was promoted as a contest of epic proportions: Man vs. Machine. It featured two men, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, considered the best to have ever played the game, who faced (if that’s the word) a computer called Watson, the latest and greatest Artificial Intelligence created by IBM. A team named the Green Bay Packers won the Superbowl. Watson beat the human players.

Most people living outside of North America know nothing about either epic contest. One of these contests has almost zero impact on anything; the other contest symbolizes something that will relatively soon affect the livelihood of people all over the world.

I’m deliberately pushing the irony button. I hope it’s obvious that the Superbowl and Jeopardy events are not equivalent, although given the levels of promotion (hype); they seemed to be approaching comparable importance. (Of course, by the measure of hype, nothing beats the Superbowl…not even the World Cup.)

In 1997 a computer IBM called “Deep Blue” narrowly defeated the reigning champion of chess, Gary Kasparov. It’s quite likely you’ve heard references to the event because it was considered a significant breakthrough for computer intelligence. In reality there was no intelligence involved; just massive calculation of chess positions (called brute force computing) and a set of rules for playing the game. Big Blue was built exclusively for playing chess, in fact, it was built just for the match with Kasparov and was dismantled shortly thereafter. Nevertheless, the victory had big juju, uh, symbolic power for computers.

In some ways the Watson victory in Jeopardy! is similar. More than a few people who watched the show were left with the impression that Watson has some kind of intelligence. It doesn’t, no more than Big Blue did; but Watson is quite a different computer than Big Blue. Where Big Blue calculated millions of chess moves, essentially mathematical calculations, Watson draws on an enormous database of facts (Jeopardy trivia), which it handles much like a specialized search engine. Where Big Blue was programmed with the relatively simple rules of chess, Watson has a much more sophisticated program to evaluate the facts coughed-up by the search engine, determine the most likely answer, and then play by the rules of Jeopardy. Watson also has something Big Blue didn’t have at all – the ability to understand questions in plain language (English, in this case).

It’s this capability, called natural language processing that gets Watson in the game and sets it apart from most other advanced computing. To play Jeopardy it had to understand the questions posed by Alex Trebek, the game’s host. Jeopardy questions are notorious for containing wordplay, ambiguity, wit and double meaning. They’re meant to be tricky. So not only did Watson need to understand plain English (through what’s called a Conversational User Interface), but it had to deal with the language peculiarities of Jeopardy. Of course, the developers of Watson’s programming were able to concentrate on the typical wording, cues, and phrases found in Jeopardy. They did well enough that Watson could correctly interpret most of the questions, but notably it did worst on those questions which were meant to be tricky.

Watson is not perfect and using 2600 processors in 90 IBM servers (not to mention the army of people who set this all up) – it’s way too expensive to be commercially useful for general applications. Nevertheless, even though putting the three elements together – natural language understanding of Jeopardy questions, searching a huge trivia database, and operating within the rules of the game – did not produce general intelligence; what it did is demonstrate for the first time to a mass audience an Artificial Expert.

Expert systems have been around a while, decades in fact. One way or another they capture some specific body of knowledge, nominally something an expert would know, and make it available on demand. With its ability to understand questions and formulate relevant answers in normal language, Watson takes the expert system to another level.

Let’s be clear about this, this Artificial Expert. It can understand questions in normal language. It can look up answers to complex questions in split seconds. It can select the best available information and provide the answer in normal language. It can sound like a human being. What else do you think a machine like Watson can do besides answer Jeopardy questions?

Let’s be specific. Do you take orders over the phone? Are you employed as a receptionist? Are you one of the people who answer questions on a help line? You will probably be out of a job when future generations of Watson become less expensive. How long do think that will take? Three years? Ten years?

Robotics and computer programs are already replacing manual labor and various kinds of information systems (yes, even the terrible phone menus count). As an Artificial Expert, a Watson-like computer will be capable of replacing or augmenting a wide range of jobs in the information industry. Most of these are considered relatively safe white-collar jobs. They’re not that safe, never have been. Most knowledge workers have ‘good enough’ jobs. They don’t really have to be experts; they just need to be good enough to answer more or less routine questions in relatively well defined areas of knowledge. Watson can already do this. Many other computers will be capable within this decade.

Still skeptical? Consider outsourcing – that’s where jobs are transferred to countries where the labor costs are lower. Outsourcing has already eliminated many knowledge worker jobs from some countries. Think of Artificial Experts as the ultimate outsource.

I’m piling on, but it’s necessary: In a modern economy, knowledge workers account for between 30 and 50 percent of the work force. Over the years – and we’re not talking decades – Artificial Experts will replace increasing percentages of this type of worker. The question is: What kind of job will replaced knowledge workers find?

I’m being deliberately blunt because complacency about the future of computer power is not harmless. We need to start considering that future. What happened in the Jeopardy game is not far away from happening to a lot of people’s jobs.

Nor does it help to pull the denialist stunt. You’re going to read and hear from people a lot of “Watson was interesting but technically no big deal.” Technically, they’re right. Substantively, they’ve got it wrong. It’s a bit like the Apple iPad. You can pick that tablet computer apart in all kinds of ways, and make all kinds of disparaging remarks. Much of the criticism is warranted; but it doesn’t matter. The Apple iPad is not only the most successful new computer in a decade or two, but it’s also driving the tablet computer into becoming a standard format for the future. IBM is determined to do something like that with the technologies behind Watson.

Granted, those technologies are in a different league than the Apple iPad. Watson-style computers are a long way from the consumer market. IBM will go first where the big money is available – medical applications, corporate systems and the like. It will take years to improve the price/performance ratio to make the technologies a commercial success. The important thing is that where IBM goes, so will at least a dozen other companies. It does not take a crystal ball to see that Artificial Expert computing is potentially a big, spreading money tree.

“Who’s afraid of Watson?” is not entirely a rhetorical question, but Watson is not Hal. I hope that’s clear. It is not to be feared like the psychotic autonomous thinking machine depicted in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001. Watson does not have intelligence. Many future generations of Watson will not have general intelligence. In practical terms, however, it doesn’t matter. Watson is showing us – right now – just how much even limited computer intelligence will compete with the knowledge of human beings. Maybe we should be just a little more anxious.

In a way, I’m reluctant to bring up the topic of cold fusion. The reason is not because cold fusion was a botched ‘epic breakthrough’ in 1989. It became a media circus. Then the field imploded into utter disrepute when the original experiment by Fleischmann and Pons could not be repeated. [Overview at Wikipedia: Cold Fusion]

No, the reason for the reluctance is the raised profile of science bashing that exists in countries such as the United States and Great Britain. There are anti-science voices finding amplification through the money and organization of anti-global warming interests. Some of those interests have origins in the energy industry. These voices are primed and ready to jump on something like a revival of cold fusion – a potential alternative energy source. They will cry ‘more bad science.’ It’s not. It is science doing what science is good at doing – challenging and responding. But that won’t matter to people for whom the narrative and its impact is far more important than the reality.

I’ll try for a brief reality-based narrative.

Cold fusion is not having a ‘revival.’ However, the idea that there is something going on with the electrolysis of palladium and heavy water (or some variation thereof), continues to stimulate experimentation.

Even after 1989, some laboratories, for example in Japan, France, and the U.S., continued to work on it; usually without much success. In 2004 a repeat of the 1989 U.S. Department of Energy study that summarized the findings on cold fusion as negative: “While significant progress has been made in the sophistication of calorimeters since the review of this subject in 1989, the conclusions reached by the reviewers today are similar to those found in the 1989 review.”

There were caveats: “The current reviewers identified a number of basic science research areas that could be helpful in resolving some of the controversies in the field, two of which were:

1) material science aspects of deuterated metals using modern characterization techniques, and

2) the study of particles reportedly emitted from deuterated foils using state-of-the-art apparatus and methods.

The reviewers believed that this field would benefit from the peer-review processes associated with proposal submission to agencies and paper submission to archival journals.”

These two slightly equivocating points, negative findings but research to be done, triggered another round of mainstream science ostracism but provided a handful of researchers with the threads to pull themselves forward.

The first big failure set up the pattern. It made it extremely difficult for scientists to do the typical slow, incremental science that might, or might not, lead to something substantial. Essentially, no respect and no funding. That difficulty might be seen as unfair. However, cold fusion is extraordinary science: It seems to promise a source of almost inexhaustible energy (fusion) without the frighteningly high temperatures and pressures of traditional fusion processes. Cold fusion was also a mystery (still is) that seemed to challenge some of the basic tenets of nuclear physics. Cold fusion is not ‘normal’ science. Its visibility was and will be far higher than most topics in science. The penalties for being wrong on high profile science are greater, as they should be.

Scientists working on cold fusion are aware of this. Most would prefer to take the profile down many notches. Instead of cold fusion, they’re more likely to call it low energy nuclear reaction (LENR) or condensed matter nuclear science. Not hiding it, exactly, but trying to de-dramatize the research. Not all of them take this approach. Some are quite content to throw gantlets and write pugnacious papers. As one of the more moderate researchers put it, the lack of mainstream recognition – specifically the peer review and publishing channels – allowed a lot of undisciplined science and scientists (a.k.a. cranks) into the field. Still, in 2010 there are several hundred researchers working on various aspects of cold fusion. Some are from well known universities and laboratories, including the U.S. military. They are still not well regarded by mainstream science, but they persist.

None of this is new to science. Science has often been unfair. Sometime the people who have suffered the slings and arrows get their day, if only after they’re long dead. Sometimes they get no day at all, ever, even if their science becomes accepted.

Science demands evidence. Cold fusion has had a problem with that. Science requires experiments that can be repeated. Cold fusion is infamous for that. Then too, evidence is not always convincing, which means there is an element of narrative, even in scientific discourse. Cold fusion has even more trouble with that, because its original narrative was a crock. The narrative of any scientific finding is at least helped by having a plausible theory of explanation. Cold fusion has had a big problem with that too. It’s one thing to point to a demonstration of cold fusion and say ‘it works’ (when it doesn’t) and even worse when you can’t provide a solid theory for why it works (or doesn’t).

Cold fusion is digging itself out of a really deep hole. It will take far more evidence than usually required to regain mainstream acceptability. Some solid theory wouldn’t hurt. It can happen though – if the research has enough evidence and it can make its case. There are plenty of examples – plate tectonics for one, the theory of relativity for another.

Because cold fusion is also a technology, if it works – if somebody actually demonstrates the creation of fusion energy at low temperatures – then eventually cold fusion will get its day. The world wants other ways to make energy. If the theory lags behind, well, that’s okay. (After all, the laws of gravity are used all the time, even though we still don’t know what gravity is.) Don’t be surprised if you see contradictory positions on the newest cold fusion research. If the science deniers jump in, the volume of contradiction will be beyond belief – literally.

An academic complaint

What got me started on this subject were some guidelines mentioned by Sidney Perkowitz (professor of physics at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia) during a recent speech to the convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Very simply (paraphrased):

Every film should be allowed just one major suspension of disbelief for the sake of the story.
Films should avoid internal inconsistencies – breaking scientific rules established in earlier scenes.

Professor Perkowitz is something of an authority on science and the entertainment industry, especially movies. His book, Hollywood Science: movies, science, and the end of the world published in 2007 established his slightly tongue-in-cheek framework for criticizing bad science in movies.

Perkowitz is a member of the Science and Entertainment Exchange, a group set up to nudge creative people (and that does include the entertainment industry) to consider using better science. They have seen no end of bad examples, but thought that providing advisory services and other technical scientific support might get writers and directors (at least) to consider making their use of science more accurate.

This is moderation in action. It is NOT a suggestion to set up a board of science censors to excise any and all transgressions against the laws of science. Nor is Professor Perkowitz calling for eternal scrutiny of every movie containing key scientific elements. This is a matter of trying to change perceptions – in the industry and to some extent the public.

Suspension of disbelief

In some ways, it all does boil down to perceptions.

Generally speaking, most people watch theater, movies, or television to be entertained. A good experience is, in part, that you understand the story; it catches you up, and you follow the narrative without interruption to the end. Interruptions – places where you drop out of the story – interfere with the quality of your experience.
In theater the principle is called suspension of disbelief. You know you’re not seeing real life, but you’re willing to suspend your disbelief so long as the story keeps you engaged. All good storytelling has this quality.

When it comes to science in entertainment, and science fiction in particular, there’s always the possibility for your suspension of disbelief to be broken by bad/junk/inaccurate science.

You’re watching the new Star Trek movie. Young, not yet Captain, Kirk has been marooned on an ice-moon, a desolate landscape of glaciers. Kirk spies a beast running toward him. (It looks a little like the furry beast of the ice planet Hoth in Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, so that’s okay.) Kirk runs, not very effectively. Just as he’s about to be taken down, the ice erupts behind him and something that looks like a cross between a crab and an insect (with a shiny chitinous shell), as big as Jim Cameron’s house, grabs the furry creature and flings it away. Then it turns, immediately to chase Kirk.

How does this huge creature get food on a glacier? And why doesn’t it just eat the furry thing? End suspension of disbelief.

Biologists in the audience are nearly in convulsions (of one kind or another). The whole scene is biologically impossible for that environment. Worse, it becomes obvious the scene is just a plot setup to get Kirk into a cave where he will meet ‘old’ Mr. Spock.

When I was a kid, going to the Saturday movies, we used to lean over to our friends and whisper: “Fake!”
But I suppose, as a kid, I would’ve thought the scene in Star Trek to be just gonzo great.

Therein lies the difference in perception. To a biologist, and probably quite few others, this scene jolts you out of the story to think about other things. To a kid, it’s just an exciting chase. To the biologist, the scene has near-zero scientific plausibility. To the child, that’s not an issue.

Scientific plausibility

Most, if not all entertainment that involves science is not completely accurate about the science (at best). However, most of us, including scientists, have a sense of what is scientifically plausible. This works even when we know the science is wrong.

For an example, think of warp drive (Star Trek) and hyperdrive (Star Wars), the ability of a spaceship to travel faster than light. If there is a science to explain this form of travel, it’s pure speculation – but that’s enough to establish scientific plausibility.

Scientific plausibility goes back to the suspension of disbelief. If the story you’re watching has plausible science – then regardless of the actual or ultimate truth – you’ll suspend disbelief and go along with the story. Some of this scientific plausibility is so well established that it becomes a matter of convention.

Conventional enjoyment

Science fiction is full of conventions (not the ones in a sports hall): faster than light travel, instant communications across space, transporters, artificial gravity – etc. None of these are even remotely real – not now and in some cases not likely ever. Most everyone knows this, including non-scientists; but we choose to accept the conventions because they’re plausible within our knowledge and experience.

Science fiction storytelling would be very difficult – and probably dull – without such conventions.

Some conventions are general – warp speed, for example. Other conventions are personal. Let’s say I’m a scientist and I don’t believe for one minute that people on spaceships can walk around like they’re on Earth (there’s some kind of artificial gravity). There is no humanly significant gravity in space, and nothing that we’ve seen so far in physics indicates that we can ever create artificial gravity. (Hell, we don’t even know what gravity is yet.) However, in the vast majority of space movies people move around the ships like there was gravity. In most cases, we go along with it. It’s not even plausible, but we’re used to seeing people walk normally, so it’s easy to forget the ‘untruth.’ It’s a falsehood we’re willing to accept by convention. Other people might not accept it.

Consistency counts

I might not accept artificial gravity either, if two scenes later, I see a character go floating weightless out of a space lock. To some extent consistency is important. As Dr. Perkowitz said, “Films should avoid internal inconsistencies.” Even if the story uses some kind of crackpot science idea, it should at least use it consistently. Otherwise it can break the suspension of disbelief.

One of my favorite inconsistencies, which you see in all kinds of movies, involves lava. Movies love to put people in places where they’re in danger of falling into molten, red-hot, lava. Sometimes we get to see that dropping, say, a knife into the lava from several hundred meters, resulting in the knife going ‘poof’ – vaporized by the heat. In another scene, same movie, the hero and party skirt around a lava flow at a distance of no more than a few meters. Maybe the characters are seen to sweat, sometimes not. In any case, molten lava has a temperature from 700-1300C (1300-2400F). Anything within a hundred meters or so will burn – give or take a few seconds. But where’s the fun in that reality?
Perhaps you wouldn’t be surprised how often the rule of scientific consistency is violated, usually for the convenience of the plot but sometimes out of sheer laziness.

Is it junk science or just fantasy?

Sometimes the ‘science’ in some genres of film is by definition ‘junk,’ but without it there’s no story. The classic examples are vampire and werewolf stories. If you can’t accept the plausibility of vampires, or werewolves, even for ninety minutes, then you’re not likely to watch this genre of movies – and many people don’t.

It’s easy to complain about the science in science fiction entertainment. It even makes sense to complain about bad science in many forms of drama, especially horror films of one kind or another. (Pity what the bad science in Jaws did for the now almost extinct great white shark.) But what about the films that are truly fantasy, yet touch upon things that are also part of science? Some of the most successful films of all time skirt between the impossible, the magic, and the scientific: Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings series.

At least these films are friendly to the concept of science and learning, if not exactly ‘accurate.’ There are plenty other films that are anti-science in one way or another. Michael Crichton tended to specialize in books (and then films) where science is the bad guy (literally and figuratively) – Jurassic Park for example. There’s a long tradition of “mad man” scientists, going back to the earliest Frankenstein. Some people perceive such films as ‘interesting’ and ‘cautionary’; others see them as direct attacks on the curiosity and method of science.

Does It Matter?

Fundamentally, I think many people – Professor Perkowitz, the Science and Entertainment Exchange – are bothered by the notion that seeing crappy science in movies and television will give people (especially young people) false impressions and bad information about science. (And it’s not like we’re doing such a great job in this department with general education.)

I’m not going to get into the argument here about the impact – or lack of it – of the entertainment media. Do people learn, and do, bad things because of what they see on TV and the movies? There are studies by the yard. Some are contradictory. Intuition is not always correct, for the impact of specific films may be quite different than some people perceive them to be. For example, the Star Wars series, which is not known for particularly accurate science – nor any interest whatsoever in presenting science with a role in the culture or society (other than negative, I suppose). Yet Star Wars probably did more for the advancement of interest in science than anything else in the latter half of the twentieth century – with the exception of the landing on the Moon. It looks like James Cameron’s Avatar is going to do that for this decade.

Sometimes the science as presented in entertainment is specifically good or bad. Mostly, however, it is a matter of trends. Dr. Perkowitz and many others find the trend to be anti-science. They seek to counteract that trend by bringing up the issues – sometimes a little ham-handedly – but that’s PR.

Hollywood and other makers of entertainment will not follow Perkowitz’s guidelines. They have only one guideline: Do what makes the most money. In that regard, we can be thankful that Avatar is not only the most successful film in history, but also involves science and scientists (Sigourney Weaver’s character) directly in the main context of the story.

For the rest of us, and by ‘us’ I mean people who are interested in forwarding the advance of science, the Perkowitz guidelines are a thought experiment. Something to get the intellectual juices flowing. It’s not enough to dismiss them out of hand. Will this be just an academic exercise? Probably, but you never know; it might become popular again to criticize entertainment for bad science. From such individual acts of criticism trends can be made.

This is really a not such a huge change in the actual operations of NASA. NASA was already partnered, for all practical purposes, with a handful of its major suppliers. NASA called the shots on specifications for equipment, but the partners set up the channels at the budget level (which is mostly political). The new arrangement changes some of the chairs at the table. NASA won’t set all the specifications, but the big money will still tend to flow in the same channels.

Of course, in the U.S. system of local ‘pork’ – the practice of allocating large Federal installations and project grants to states with politically favorable environments; there will be some losers. Communities in Alabama, Florida, Texas, Utah and elsewhere will find their unemployment rates looking like those for the rest of the country. Most of the adjustments were expected, however, and the space industry in the United States (what was left of it) was already undergoing subtle or not so subtle shifts. The military portion of the space business will remain in the hands of the Pentagon and its business partners (many of whom are same as the NASA business partners). NASA may be dealing with many ‘entrepreneurial’ endeavors, which it previously avoided like the plague, though it will make this as symbolic as possible.

Nevertheless, for the rest of the world looking on, the change in policy actually constitutes something of an experiment. The United States will be the only country that actually seems to expect private initiative – that is, innovative, entrepreneurial companies – to become a prominent part of developing space. In the beginning, it will be to develop a space-worthy vehicle for servicing the International Space Station. Later, it will be space tourism, or whatever. To most of the world, this seems fully in character with the spirit of the United States – business first, last, and in the middle.

Gone are the projects that capture the imagination. No attempts to reach Mars or the Moon. It will be very problematic for any country to mount a space operation of that scale without seriously jeopardizing its economic stability. The Europeans have already decided to commit no such folly. Japan, India, and Brazil would choke on the cost. Russia will have to be willing to risk its treasury and waning technical credibility. China…well, China could probably make the effort. The Chinese will need to make a calculation similar to that made by the United States and Russian during the first race to the Moon – Is there a pressing national prestige at stake? Certainly having the people of the People’s Republic standing on the Moon would make a fine statement. If it can be done.

That’s the problem with manned exploration of outer space in this decade (2010-2020); it’s still a marginal proposition, i.e. risky. The technology hasn’t improved much from what was invented for the space programs of the 1960’s. Yes, we have better computers. There are better materials for constructing spacecraft. However, propulsion systems are still barely controlled explosions that blow enormous quantities of money and materials with each rocket. A cheaper, modular, systematic approach to achieving space from Earth’s enormous gravity well is nowhere to be seen. Until those problems are solved, grand visions of sending even a few people far into space are mostly suicidal.

That’s one of the things making the American commercial space experiment interesting. Is it possible that the wherewithal for projects, which the taxpayer won’t pay and the government can’t manage, can be found among the biggest (and smallest) corporations? Are there enough technical and systems solutions to be found that way? We’ll know in a couple of decades.

Meanwhile, as the ‘manned space flight’ issue spins off into the realms of investment and capital formation, there is the ‘other’ issue: Science in space.

It’s no secret that un-manned space flight, largely for the purpose of doing science, is rewarding both in knowledge and in media coverage. It suits the governments of countries with space ambitions well. There is an almost insatiable desire on the part of fairly large swaths of the world’s population to read, hear and see things about space. Perhaps it is the science fiction culture, or perhaps it is just the ‘pioneer in us all’ but space remains on the romantic end of many people’s thoughts. This can, and often does, translate into at least moderate support for missions like Cassini (to Saturn) or equipment such as the Kepler Space Telescope. Even so, most science oriented space projects are expensive relative to return. They exist at the margin of governmental support. The diminution of money for manned space flight does not mean an increase in money for science. Possibly quite the contrary, as once the economizing begins in one area, it will have a tendency to spread to others.

What will happen to science in space in the absence of the grand visions for human exploration? Perhaps there is something of an inspirational vacuum, an opportunity that something – a country, a company, an idea – will seize? At the start of 2010, let’s be optimistic.

I’ve come to the conclusion the issue has so many valid perspectives that a single precise description of ‘Internet neutrality’ does not exist. Likewise almost all the arguments involve hypothetical outcomes, which means that anybody claiming certainty about the issue is deluded. However, because net neutrality is at the heart of who owns, controls, and prices the Internet – it is very important. It’s important to think about it, even if the inherent untidiness makes everyone unhappy.

A Bewildering Borderland

To recap briefly, although the concept of net neutrality is pulled around like taffy, it generally starts with the notion that the Internet is neutral toward the source and content of information. The Internet makes no distinction between the packets of data it carries except to know the destination in order to find the best available route.

The most pressing and ongoing controversy concerns companies that operate big parts of the Internet particularly in the U.S., such as A.T.&T. and Warner Communications, that want to charge content providers, such as Google and Microsoft, for transmitting certain kinds of data, mainly streaming media such as voice and video, which should have faster and more reliable service. The content providers are opposed to this, of course. More generally, in order to distinguish between types of Internet traffic, for example, to find out what is streaming media or not, it is necessary to analyze the source and content of packets. This analysis violates the principle of net neutrality and is seen as a threat to an open and fair Internet.

Even a barebones description like this reveals that some large forces are in play on the net neutrality issue. Unfortunately, the issue exists in an ill-defined borderland between public and commercial interests. The public interest says protect the Internet and its equal access to information. The commercial interest says let us be free to improve the Internet and earn a profit from doing so. Arguments over public and commercial issues like these go back thousands of years, at least to the Greeks and Romans; yet there is no formula for resolving the issues. In the U.S. net neutrality has been sucked into the polarity of the pervasive political framing with the Republican side screaming about government interference and the Democratic side about corporate depredation.

How Did We Get To This?

Part of the situation is historical. The Internet backbones, the trunk lines used to move the bulk of traffic nationally and internationally have always operated on common carrier principles. In the tradition of the national telephone systems, those who owned the Internet backbone lines were prohibited from discriminating among who or what was being carried.

In the U.S., in August of 2005 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ruled that phone companies had the right to offer services (beyond access) for their own broadband networks. This opened the regulatory door to premium Quality of Service (QoS) offerings. In September, the FCC announced the phase out of line-sharing, the practice under common carrier laws where ISPs must rent bandwidth to other companies. This followed an FCC re-classification of cable ISPs, already exempt from common carrier rules, from telecommunication to information services, a change that gave cable companies exclusive control over the kinds of data they carry. These and other FCC rulings and statements of direction signaled to ISPs (telephone and cable) that many common carrier and net neutrality restrictions were or will be removed.

At roughly the same time as the change in FCC policy, Congress tackled the re-writing of the 1996 Communications Act. This was largely in recognition that new technologies will (or should) change the communications landscape and that new laws, subsidies, and competitive safeguards should be put in place. Between Congress and the FCC, broad changes in U.S. communications policy are afoot, most of which is avidly supported by the communications industry, and which I note makes howling about the potential of bumbling government intervention on net neutrality more than a little hypocritical.

The Router Revolution

Outside the focus on the net neutrality brouhaha sits a lamentably unquantified and poorly described technical problem: Does the Internet have the capacity to handle world-wide phone, television, movie and other media traffic? If not, who will build that capacity and how does it get paid for?

Content providers already pay for huge bandwidth (T1, T3 lines and so forth) to move data to and from their servers. Consumers pay for more bandwidth (256 kb/s, 1 mb/s, etc.) to move packets faster to and from their homes and businesses. If you want more speed, you get a bigger pipe and pay for it. However, the big ISPs say this is not going to be enough to fund the necessary upgrades to the system, by which they mean laying fiber optic cable on either end of the backbone (first mile/last mile).

What they want is to also charge for faster routing. Right now, all packets entering the Internet are handled the same way. Routers check the header for destination and search for optimal routes. Not long ago this was all that routers could do efficiently, but the new generations of equipment can determine who sent the packets and what’s in them and use that information to move them in faster channels. For a price, say the ISPs, performance critical packets like telephone conversations can be guaranteed real-time quality of service.

The Router as Pandora’s Box

No doubt the new routers can discriminate among the packets, and faster routing over dedicated channels can improve the quality of streaming media. In the United States the FCC is clearing the way for ISPs to charge for it. However, there are questions that should be answered:

Will charging for premium transmission cover the cost of upgrading the networks? I have seen only vague hand waving by the communications industry about costs and income streams. Are these to be charges in perpetuity? Most of the cost of laying cable is up front.

Is this the only way to pay for upgrades to the network? Is commercial ownership of the new fiber optic cable the only model? (This is a rhetorical question, of course. Other countries do it in many different ways.)

Once the right exists to open any and all packets, to inspect their headers and contents, what is the potential for abuse and who monitors it? It may be a classic slippery slope: At the start, it’s a benign commercial transaction. Further down the slope companies that don’t pay can be poorly routed, delayed, or even blocked. Somewhere on the slope a step is made from analyzing packets for commercial purposes to analyzing packets for political, social, religious, criminal, or other purposes. As routers become increasingly sophisticated, the ways of analyzing and “handling” packets will become equally subtle and potentially insidious.

What will be the impact on the overall costs of Internet access and who will (ultimately) pay it? Will there be a two-tiered Internet, where there are those with premium services, and those who don’t? What does that mean for average consumers? It might be good to have an equivalent of an environmental impact statement, a study or three that examines economic and social effects of new communications policy.

Get Real: It’s Government Compromise and the Courts

At some point governments around the world are almost certain to make an effort to de-couple the net neutrality issue from prevailing ‘fairness’ controls. This will be difficult because many opposing parties will mobilize, but the biggest money probably favors the decoupling. Regardless of ideology, in most countries the battle will be governmental and regulatory.

If the resolution to the net neutrality issue takes longer than some would like, that may not be all bad. There are questions to be answered. The issues surrounding the future of communications are complex and hypothetical. We will not get instant and detailed truths. This is especially true since the technological environment is in constant change. Compromise will be necessary, laws and policy may have to be conditional or even experimental. In any case, batteries of lawyers are standing by to see any aspect of net neutrality in court. It’s going to be messy, but it is quintessentially modern: A battle between technological capabilities and the human capacity to use or abuse them.

On October 9, 2009 NASA’s LCROSS mission to the Moon did something expected to be dramatic. It split the LCROSS spacecraft into two pieces. One piece, bringing up the rear, would take video and monitor a second piece that went ahead. Both pieces were intended to ______ a specific crater on the Moon’s surface.

NASA, which is the reference for the scientific objectives of the mission, consistently used the word impact. The media often chose other words: “…slammed a bus-size projectile into the Moon.” (New York Times), “NASA is gearing up to crash two probes into the Moon.” (space.com). In fact, more often than not the media used bomb: “NASA’s mission to bomb the Moon” (Scientific American), “Inside NASA’s Plan to Bomb the Moon…” (Popular Mechanics).

If the media were paying attention to technical reality…bombs contain explosives. The LCROSS capsule contained no explosives. It was intended to raise Moon dust by the force of its impact, as do thousands of meteors that hit the Moon every year. Oh, and bombs are dropped or planted. LCROSS was launched; it was a science oriented spacecraft, not a bomb.

Is this nit picking? Mmmm…bomb is a stronger word than impact. It conjures violent images, mostly associated with war, or these days, terrorism. The difference between the two words is called hype. In this case while bomb is not an accurate word, it gets more attention. The cumulative effect of using words like bomb instead of impact, adds up. People become accustomed to science couched in dramatic language. In fact, if the reporting of science doesn’t use hype, it becomes seen as less interesting or not even worthwhile.

Is this happening? What do you think?

There is, in fact, a web site dontbombthemoon.com that screams (in all caps) “We feel that bombing the Moon could bring us consequences that are both psychic and physical. Disruption of cycles?” Another similar site says, “Could NASA be waging war on alien races?” Talk-show-radio had callers who complained, “…why are we always bombing places?”

NASA and some of the media went out of their way to promote the event, as if it were going to be some intense visual fireworks – you know, like blowing something up. (Hey, if you bomb something, isn’t it supposed to blow up?) Kids were called out of bed at 5AM, news cameras rolled, even President Obama praised the event. However, in your actual event, nothing but the NASA equipment impacting the Moon saw anything. Apparently what was recorded was a smash hit for science, but something of a dud for PR. In other words the build-up amounted to _______.

This was unfortunate but consistent with the dramatization of everything in this Age of Hype.