MH - this is, as always, a brilliant essay. Speaking as a professional science writer its also perhaps the most depressing depiction I've ever encountered about the state of science/math journalism and the hurdles facing those who try to write about these subjects for a general audience. You nail what is wrong with the current state of science journalism - that it's become almost totally about spectacle and nearly always follows a TED-like narrative arc that I summarize as "onward and upward, overcoming personal hurdles to eventually triumph in the attainment of some bright shiny object of 'Truth'." This is the version of public science writing epitomized by its biggest stars - Brian Green, Sean Carroll, Brian Cox, Marcus DuSautoy, and so on – who universally present science/math as a progression of successes that make human existence 'ever better,' with its human actors, Galileo, Newton, Einstein etc, courageous heroes who fought apathy and authority to 'free us all' from intellectual error and tyranny.
The biggest actors of public science communication are not journalists, but scientists - who get by far the biggest book advances, who get lauded with lavish resources to host TV series and Podcasts, and who get vast grants to run public science events such Green's hubristically named World Science Festival. In the game of public science engagement, journalists are small fry lacking almost any power, who are almost universally poorly paid (often without health insurance or any workplace benefits), and who, in order to make a living at all, are forced to conform to the formats set by publishers, who, as you (following DeBord) rightly point out, are almost universally funded by private individuals and foundations who made their money From science and want nothing less than a critique of the enterprise.
So where does this leave us? If we believe it is important to include more people in discourses about science/math, and thus to be involved in dialogs about how these fields of knowledge and practice will be integrated into, and deployed in, our society, then how Can we proceed in the age of the spectacle? I've been trying to confront this question for 40 years in my work with public science engagement. What I've learned working on three continents over four decades, is that if one doesn't spectacularize in DeBord's sense, there are No sources of funding available. As your essay so acutely describes, this is a tragedy for our society. So how do we go forward?
MH - this is, as always, a brilliant essay. Speaking as a professional science writer its also perhaps the most depressing depiction I've ever encountered about the state of science/math journalism and the hurdles facing those who try to write about these subjects for a general audience. You nail what is wrong with the current state of science journalism - that it's become almost totally about spectacle and nearly always follows a TED-like narrative arc that I summarize as "onward and upward, overcoming personal hurdles to eventually triumph in the attainment of some bright shiny object of 'Truth'." This is the version of public science writing epitomized by its biggest stars - Brian Green, Sean Carroll, Brian Cox, Marcus DuSautoy, and so on – who universally present science/math as a progression of successes that make human existence 'ever better,' with its human actors, Galileo, Newton, Einstein etc, courageous heroes who fought apathy and authority to 'free us all' from intellectual error and tyranny.
The biggest actors of public science communication are not journalists, but scientists - who get by far the biggest book advances, who get lauded with lavish resources to host TV series and Podcasts, and who get vast grants to run public science events such Green's hubristically named World Science Festival. In the game of public science engagement, journalists are small fry lacking almost any power, who are almost universally poorly paid (often without health insurance or any workplace benefits), and who, in order to make a living at all, are forced to conform to the formats set by publishers, who, as you (following DeBord) rightly point out, are almost universally funded by private individuals and foundations who made their money From science and want nothing less than a critique of the enterprise.
So where does this leave us? If we believe it is important to include more people in discourses about science/math, and thus to be involved in dialogs about how these fields of knowledge and practice will be integrated into, and deployed in, our society, then how Can we proceed in the age of the spectacle? I've been trying to confront this question for 40 years in my work with public science engagement. What I've learned working on three continents over four decades, is that if one doesn't spectacularize in DeBord's sense, there are No sources of funding available. As your essay so acutely describes, this is a tragedy for our society. So how do we go forward?