FAS Public Interest Report

While this newsletter is mailed out to FAS members, more than 300 times as many people will read it using a web browser. As traditional print and video formats lose market share – particularly with younger scientists and engineers – FAS has worked hard to make effective use of new tools ranging from blogging to complex online simulations. Reporters working for newspapers or television networks make heavy use of these FAS resources, which creates a channel to reach a broad international audience directly. FAS was one of the first non-governmental organizations to have a website. Steve Aftergood was blogging before the word “blog” was coined. FAS remains today a powerful presence in these new media.

But while we’re celebrating the cost reduction to reach large numbers of people with these new media, it turns out this is only a very small part of the story. Powerful graphics, animations, and simulations introduce an entirely new dimension to convey complex concepts with greater clarity and efficiency. In many cases, innovations for conveying information recapture much of the fun inherent in the most ancient forms of learning – playing around with stuff, building things and trying them out, imitating the skills of experts and asking them for their help.

Virtual experience is not an exact substitute for experiments with natural phenomena, exposure to the great works of art, or visits to great historic, geographic, or environmental sites. But there is no practical way to deliver these experiences to the billions of people who could benefit from them without using new information tools. Simulations also allow us to experience phenomena and ideas on any physical level or any place in history. The conversations, collaborations, and trust created in the virtual spaces, of course, are very real.

An unexpected additional dimension has opened recently as practical tools become available for collaborating in the production and review of information available online. Wiki-tools for collaborative production and review are an increasingly familiar and convenient source of information – though solutions to the many problems raised by these techniques are still highly experimental. Technologies now rapidly entering the market are creating even more intriguing opportunities. Online collaborators can build complex 3D models and simulations to represent an ancient city, a functioning cell, or a virtual laboratory for exotic physics experiments. Building, reviewing, and using these tools in a way that ensures continuous review and improvement will not be easy. But success could transform the way knowledge from diverse sources is combined and communicated.

FAS has approached the challenge in several ways. First we’ve worked with Congress to invest in a national research and development effort to understand which technologies work and which do not. Second, FAS developed a series of new instructional systems for different groups of learners in diverse subject areas. We’ve learned a lot – including a long list of things we don’t know. Third, we’re moving away from the “go into a back room and build it” strategy for producing IT-based learning tools to create an environment where tools can be built and tested by collaborators worldwide. Specifically, FAS is working to build a community of academic, business, and government groups interested in collaborating on the construction and use of persistent online 3D worlds to be used for learning. And finally, FAS is using a number of these innovative tools in its own work.

We are, for example, exploring ways to use new online tools to help Americans understand the paradoxes inherent in the current U.S. nuclear posture and explore the implications of a major change – including deep reductions or the elimination of nuclear weapons. Our biosecurity project developed a powerful set of multimedia courses to emphasize the dangers inherent in dual use technology to research biologists without the usual kind of pedantry used in “you must listen to this” directives. The FAS building group will use simulations and animations to help builders and building inspectors understand how to create structures that are safer and dramatically more energy efficient.

This issue of the PIR will explore the use of these new communication technologies from many different perspectives. We hope it stimulates you to join the conversation.

-Henry Kelly

FAS

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