On Vannevar Bush’s ‘As we may think’

As a creative person, discussions about science usually give me a mysterious rash. I have many loved ones who are scientific and mathematical wunderkinds, and when they try to talk about their exciting day learning the intricacies of some area of Biochemistry I always express a warm smile of generic enthusiasm. When asked for my thoughts on the subject I always offer, ‘oh I just love the way your face lights up and you get so animated when you talk about stuff you’re passionate about’.

However, Bush’s in depth discussion of science in relation to a future after warfare was actually exhilarating. I liked what he said about the inadequacies of the technologies of extension available to scientists, the archaic ‘methods of transmitting and reviewing’ now ‘totally inadequate for their purpose’. He draws on the example of how ‘Mendel’s concept of the laws of genetics  was lost to the world for a generation because his publication did not reach the few who were capable of grasping and extending it’. Indeed, to draw on a traditional Easternish proverb/myth (not up with my knowledge here) if a monumental discovery is made (in a forest say?) and no one is there to hear it, does it actually happen? Well it does, but no one knows about it, thus no one cares about it- and no future dude will ever be able to chatter enthusiastically to his disinterested other half about it.

Even if the discovery or finding was communicated to others/the tree was heard by nearby squirrels, Bush states that such ‘attainments become lost in the mass of the inconsequential’. I think this is applicable to the current state of journalism and PR.

When I grow up I want to be Spinal Tap’s PR Queen Bobbi Fleckman, played by Fran Drescher, my messiah, so as well as doing Prof Comm I’m doing a number of internships in the field. Of course I’m not as fab as Bobbi yet as a bumbling teen still playing office dress up, but I’m lucky/good enough to be managing the media relations for an upcoming Mental Health Campaign. In this job I speak to a lot of journos and articulately beg them to pick up the releases I’ve sent out to them. Per day these guys get a mass of these, and I am in full knowledge that though what I am promoting is an amazing cause, my release is like a needle in a haystack of equally worthy and significantly less worthy causes (as a side note, why am I so worried about moral ‘worthiness’ and PR? I have another year of my degree to learn I guess :)) . Technologies such as ‘Medianet’ make it easy for what PR people call a ‘media spray’, and provides an incredible point of access to journos. However, this technology kind of empowers the sea of the inconsequential Bush is talking about.

Being a journo with a widely accessible email address must be like being a facebook user with 15,000 friends mosty under 15. There may be some valid stories amongst the mirror selfies and candy crush updates, but the incentive to look for them is not quite there.

Epiphany! Perhaps the secret to being Bobbi Fleckman is providing journos with the incentive to sift through the inconsequential.

Thanks Vannevar Bush, I’m sure that wasn’t the point of your article but I found it very life affirming!