D. Boucher at The Economic Word generated the above chart with Google’s endlessly entertaining Ngram viewer. The Ngram viewer lets you search for the number of occurrences of a specific word in every book Google has indexed thus far. As you can see, “future” peaked in 2000, leading Boucher to wonder if we’re beyond the future. Yet, Boucher hedges:

Strangely, however, I look at the technological improvements over the past ten years and I see revolutionary ideas one on top of the other (for instance, the iPhone, iPad, Kindle, Google stuff, Social Networks…). My first reaction is to blindly hypothesize that our current technological prowess may distract us from the future. If it is the case, could it be that technology is a detriment to forward-looking thinkers?

I thought it might be fun to Ngram the Science Not Fiction topics of choice and see if we live up to our reputation as rogue scientists from the future. I figured if we’re all from the future, then our topics should either a) match the trend or b) buck the trend. I’m not sure which is right, but the results were quite interesting. Charts after the jump!

I searched the topics from 1900-2008 with a smoothing of 4.

To start, Kevin Grazier with Space and Physics:

Jeremy Jacquot with Biology and Biotech:

Malcolm MacIver with AI and Robotics:

Erik Wolff with Engineering, Energy, and Electronics:
It seems my compatriots are all from the future, indeed! Peaks in the ’80s and ’90s right down the line, as predicted by the initial “future” graph. The hypothesis holds. The future must be behind us.

And now, yours truly with Transhumanism and Human Enhancement:

My goodness, an anomaly! Look at that exponential growth–whoa, so intense, but what does it mean? I honestly have no idea. Now, both transhumanism and human enhancement are much smaller percentages of the total word count (.000001% as opposed to say, AI’s peak of .001%), but they are the only words still on the rise. Do scientific words with futuristic connotations hit a saturation point? Or are we no longer thinking of the Next Big Thing as being futuristic? I hope to have something resembling an answer before the New Year.

Back in the early 1990s, Jon Durant very usefully outlined out the three main types of scientific literacy. This is probably as good a place to start as any:

• Knowing some science – For example, having A-level biology, or simply knowing the laws of thermodynamics, the boiling point of water, what surface tension is, that the Earth goes around the Sun, etc.
• Knowing how science works – This is more a matter of knowing a little of the philosophy of science (e.g. ‘The Scientific Method’, a matter of studying the work of Popper, Lakatos or Bacon).
• Knowing how science really works – In many respects this agrees with the previous point – that the public need tools to be able to judge science, but does not agree that science works to a singular method. This approach is often inspired by the social studies of science and stresses that scientists are human. It covers the political and institutional arrangement of science, including topics like peer review (including all the problems with this), a recent history of policy and ethical debates and the way funding is structured

On the first point, I do think that there are some basic science facts which should be required fodder in K-12 education. From my field alone, people should not only know that Earth orbits the sun, they should know that our year is based upon the time takes Earth to complete the journey.  Don’t laugh. On my last birthday, when I told folks that I’d completed another orbit of the Sun, a distressing number of them did not understand the implication and, upon further questioning, didn’t know that Earth’s orbital period was the basis of one year. K-12 students should know that the Moon orbits Earth, why it goes through phases, and given it’s significance (in particular for several religious holidays), that our month is based upon that orbital period. Finally, everybody should know why we have seasons.

Knowing how to find Polaris, the North Star, and why your satellite TV installer pointed the dish south-facing, are both practical, but I’d place those in the category of “nice to have” not “need to have.” At the same time, I also think there’s a fourth bullet item that Dr. Bell could have included, one to which she alludes in the body of her text:

Science isn’t necessarily a transferable skill. This is easily demonstrated by examining carefully the lives of scientists outside of the laboratory (or, to put it another way: “yeah, cos scientists are all sooo well organised outside of work, living super-rational evidence-based lives, all the time”). It would be lovely if we could provide a formula for well-lived lives, but people just aren’t that consistent.

In addition to teaching factoids—even useful ones—about science, and in addition to educating non-scientists about the process of science, educators need in instill  a willingness in people use the lessons learned and knowledge imparted. Why do we learn this stuff? Why is it practical?

At the same time, there is a human tendency, to which Dr. Bell alludes in her quote above, to compartmentalize our knowledge. Dr. Bell implies, rightfully so, that many, arguably most, scientists check scientific thought at the door as they leave work–when it would be equally useful in organizing their (our) personal lives. Related, talk to any science educator who’s given a writing assignment. I can guarantee that, at some point(s), the assignment was met with the student question, “Are you going to grade off for English?” as if proper grammar is the purview of English class alone and slacking is allowed in biology (or pick your favorite science). Author Jennifer Oullette uses this notion—that life runs more smoothly and interestingly when met with a dose of science and math–in her Calculus Diaries: How Math Can Help You Lose Weight, Win in Vegas, and Survive a Zombie Apocalypse.

What got me jazzed on this topic, enough to write at length about it, was the confluence of two events – one fun, quirky, and topical, one somewhat more on the horizon – both of which benefit when approached with a due application of scientific skepticism. The first was a recent web buzz, where a Charlie Chaplin movie (and not a particularly good one at that) was, in essence, promoted from the genre of comedy to science fiction. A woman in the 1928 Charlie Chaplin film The Circus appears to be talking on a cell phone, which wasn’t invented until decades later.

A short Google search turns up countless, and often very amusing, analyses on this video like this one from the Washington Post. Apparently George Clark of Yellow Fever Productions noticed the quirk  of the “woman on a cell phone” in the background when he was watching the DVD extras for the film, and after a year of studying this clip, he concluded:

This short film is about a piece of footage I (George Clarke) found behind the scenes in Charlie Chaplin’s film ‘The Circus’. Attending the premiere at Mann’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, CA – the scene shows a large woman dressed in black with a hat hiding most of her face, with what can only be described as a mobile phone device – talking as she walks alone.

I have studied this film for over a year now – showing it to over 100 people and at a film festival, yet no-one can give any explanation as to what she is doing.

My only theory – as well as many others – is simple… a time traveler on a mobile phone. See for yourself and feel free to leave a comment on your own explanation or thoughts about it.

Seriously? NOBODY could give an explanation better than that of a time-traveling cell phone user? Well web sites and surfers alike certainly offered up their speculation.

What was surprising, nay a wee bit appalling, was the ratio of conspiracy theories—and just plain “out there” speculation—to critical and/or scientific thought (Though if you read one article, the second post in the talkback, there’s a hilarious example of somebody who tried too hard to apply too much science to the problem, and winds up writing a lengthy discourse, nay manifesto, about Einstein and time and relativity and GPS satellites and the speed of light and… what were we talking about again?).

One simple “Where’s the cell tower?” comment (and thankfully there were some of these) in the articles’ talkbacks  should have been “End of subject”, at least as far as the object being any kind of communications device, and in too many cases it wasn’t. Do the search yourself, even when there were posts of this nature they were often ignored, and outlandish hypotheses floated instead. While I’m not beyond my own tongue-in-cheek blog posts (muzzle flashes from alien warfare anybody?), it’s astounding to me how many Twilight Zone-caliber theories were floated on the 1928 cell phone user that weren’t intended as glib. (Trust me, I’m from the future, and we have way better communication devices than cell phones.)

Which brings me to the second topic that got me to write this, my own manifesto, which is one that is still ahead of us but one on which I’ll posted increasingly often. It’s late 2010, and in the runup to 2012 a quick Google search reveals that the whole Mayan Calendar mythos is still generating a vast amount of fear and fear-mongering.  We will all soon be subject to an onslaught of sketchy scientific claims, references to “lost” ancient wisdom, and predictions of gloom and doom on this front from now until January 2013. Not only is is useful to have Mad Science Skillz to combat outlandish claims, we have to be both willing to use the tools at our disposal and to pay attention when the scientifically perspicacious make what should be topic-concluding “Where’s the cell tower?”-like observations.

Science fiction has long tackled the biggest questions about the human condition: What is reality? What makes us human? What is consciousness?

So to Susan Schneider, an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, sci-fi seemed a logical way to illustrate some of the existential conundrums of philosophers over the ages, from Plato to René Descartes to David Chalmers.

“Science fiction fires the imagination and can get across conceptual ideas and thought experiments, or scenarios, that test philosophical theories,” she says. “Consider Isaac Asimov and his stories about robots and what happens if they become conscious. What does that tell us about the notion of a person?”

In her new book, Science Fiction and Philosophy: From Time Travel to Superintelligence (Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, 2009), Schneider mines time travel, artificial intelligence, robot rights, teleportation, and genetic modification to discuss the nature of space and time, free will, transhumanism, the self, neuroethics, and reality.

Each chapter tackles a different philosophical question via essays by Schneider and academic colleagues with titles like “Could I be in a Matrix or a Computer Simulation?” and “Free Will and Determinism in the World of Minority Report.” These discussions draw parallels between such sci-fi stalwarts as Star Trek, Blade Runner, and Brave New World, and philosophical classics like Plato’s The Republic and Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy.

The book sprang from a 2007 undergraduate Penn course of the same name, which she plans to resume in the 2010-2011 school year. The course grew of out of Schneider’s quest for a compelling way to introduce students to philosophy, plus her own research on the nexus of philosophy and cognitive science.

“Cognitive science regards thinking as computational. I examine how it shapes our understanding of the mind, the self, and consciousness,” says Schneider. “If both computers and humans arrive at answers in a computational manner, then how much of a difference is there between us and them? Not all philosophical questions involve cognitive science. But the area of philosophy I’m most interested in—the nature of our minds and thinking—is in constant dialogue with cognitive science.”

— Guest-blogger Susan Karlin

Via Hero Complex come these ingenious public service announcements and travel posters from a near future in which time travel is possible and robots are self-cleaning.  Designed by artist Amy Martin, the posters are $20 each and proceeds benefit 826LA, a non-profit writing center for kids 6 to 18.

In the following audio you can listen in on what amounted to a 20-minute chat with David Tennant (The  Doctor, obviously) and Julie Gardner (executive producer and now head of drama for BBC Worldwide)  and five reporters. You’ll here Tennant and Gardner talk about shooting “Planet of the Dead,” the sadness of ending their time working with the Doctor, their futures, and the possibility of Tennant attending the next day’s panel naked. Both are charming, and I think you’ll enjoy it.

(The recording is a little noisy at the start, but on the upside, you’ll get to hear Tennant expressing amazement at all the recorders paced in front of him. Also, you’ll hear a lot of reporters asking questions, but no, none of them are me.)

The Audio Charm of Dr. Who, David Tennant

1. Up until now, The Doctor has been played by characters on the thin side, from William Hartnell as the spry First Doctor to the angular Tennant as today’s Tenth Doctor. Why not go large? Possibilities – Robbie Coltrane, Matt Lucas, Mark Addy.
2. We’ve seen female Time Lords before, so why not a Lady Doctor? A female doctor also opens up the door for the return of the long-term male companion.  Possibilities – Samantha Morton, Helen Mirren.
3. If America can elect a black President, then the BBC can cast a black Doctor. Possibilities – Chiwetel Ejiofor, Don Cheadle (reprising his British accent from Ocean’s 11)
4. Why does the Doctor always have to be British? The BBC could sell out to world’s most lucrative TV market by going American.  Possibilities – Jason Bateman, Neil Patrick Harris
5. And why must a regenerated Doctor always mean a brand new actor? With the loss of Tennant in these uncertain and anxious times, the BBC could reassure us by returning to the other Greatest Doctor Of All Time: Tom Baker.

Donna and the Doctor’s relationship is like that between adult siblings or very old friends, and it’s a nice change of pace from the romantic overtones that played out with the previous two companions. The dynamic is enhanced by the fact that Tate/Noble is older than the typical early-twenty-something female companion, and so perhaps a little less susceptible to looking at the adventurous Doctor with a starry-eyed gaze. Donna is perfectly willing cut the Doctor down to size if she thinks he’s getting a little too pleased with himself. This leads to some of the most memorable exchanges of the show to date, and Tate plays the part with impeccable comic timing and gusto. Tennant is, well, still the best Doctor ever (with Tom Baker in a more than honorable second place.)

The Doctor and Donna’s friendship plays out across a season of ambitious stories. The fall of Pompeii, a factory of alien slaves, a library the size of a planet that plays host to some of the scariest monsters ever, and the intensely claustrophobic confines of a damaged shuttle all form the background to some thrilling (and sometimes genuinely moving) plots. The season builds to a no-holds-barred climax which acts as a reunion show of sorts: A group of the Doctor’s former companions (including Torchwood’s Captain Jack and Sarah Jane Smith) band together to stop a dark threat from the past. Some Who watchers objected to the second half of the finale, feeling that the conclusion tried too hard to make fans happy in some respects. But I think the show stayed true to the darker and more ambiguous nature of the show, with an ending that really packed a punch.

The DVD’s also include the standalone 2006 Christmas Special, in which the Doctor teams up with Astrid Peth, played by none other than Kylie Minogue. (The real scene stealers are The Hosts, angelic robot concierges that go very, very bad.) There’s also a set of making-of features, one for each episode, deleted scenes (including a slightly, but significantly, alternate ending to the Season Four finale), and a bunch of other extras. If you decide to only ever own one season of Doctor Who, make it this one.

The British sci-fi series, Primeval, features a small team who have the job of capturing dinosaurs and other creatures who wander through rips, or “anomalies,” in the time-space continuum.The DVD of the first season that we reviewed yesterday is out today, and the nice folks at BBC America gave us the opportunity to pose a question to the cast about the show. Here, Andrew-Lee Potts, who plays Connor Temple, the show’s resident geek, answers our question about what creature he’d most like to see make an appearance on the show.

In recent years, science fiction and fantasy shows have generally tried to steer away from plotlines that involve creatures appearing, then terrifying and/or eating bystanders, and then being dispatched at the end of the episode once the cast has figured out the creatures’ main weakness. This plot formula is only for the start of season one, the thinking goes, when audiences need self-contained stories to introduce them to the cast and the show’s milieu. The real meat happens later, as multi-episode arcs and more complex character development are brought in, and monster-of-the-week episodes, with their limited formula, go to the bottom of the story pitch pile. Primeval explodes this thinking by having a show built firmly around the monster-of-the-week device, while still advancing engaging season-length arcs and furthering clever character development.

The premise of the show is that tears in the space-time continuum are popping up in increasing numbers across the countryside. The tears, referred to as “anomalies,” connect the present day with various time periods in the Earth’s history, typically tens or hundreds of millions of years into the past. Problems arise when the local prehistoric fauna—a T. Rex perhaps, or a gorgonopsid—wander through an anomaly into, say, a shopping mall parking lot. Our band of heroes, led by paleontologist Nick Cutter (played by Douglas Henshall, whose grounded performance makes a good counterpoint to the more fantastic elements of the show,) is tasked with keeping a lid on things. Complicating matters are the team’s abrasive boss (my favorite, as the writers have given him much more depth than such a character normally receives, and he occasionally steals the show) and Cutter’s sorta-ex wife, who is shaping up to be the best British female science fiction villain since Servalan.

The other big stars of the show are the creatures, beautifully and realistically animated CGI creations–it’s not a surprise that they’re good, since the team that produces them was responsible for the BBC documentary Walking With Dinosaurs. For Primeval, some artistic license does get taken, but the creatures that run, swim, and fly through the show are very believable, and prove you don’t have to travel to another planet to find creatures and worlds that are utterly alien.

The first DVD volume of Primeval was actually shown as two seasons on British television, then combined into one 13-episode season on BBC America. (A third season in expected to air in the UK in January). There is an audio commentary for some episodes, and behind-the-scenes bonus features. It goes on-sale tomorrow, when Science Not Fiction will have an exclusive clip from one of the Primeval cast members talking about what kind of creatures they’d like to see on future episodes of the show.

ETA: Typo fixed!

The clock in question is a new addition to Eureka’s research labs, capable of measuring slices of time less than one billionth of one millionth of a second (one femtosecond). The technically-inclined characters seem quite excited by it, as they should—in the real world, maintaining a grip on the exact passage of time is an essential and technologically-intensive activity. Our ability to measure time accurately is the key to many other measurements–for example, the meter is defined in terms of how far a photon can travel in one second.

Historically, the most accurate way to measure time was to use astronomy. The second was defined as 1/86,400th of the length of time it took the earth to rotate once on its axis. This worked fine in the era when clockwork meant little gears and springs, but eventually clocks were built that were accurate enough to detect the fact that the Earth’s rotation is ever-so-slightly, but continually, slowing down. Rather than have seconds grow slowly longer as the years went by, the second was redefined in terms of the best clock then available, the so-called atomic clocks, which rely on measuring the frequency of specific type of microwave radiation emitted by cesium atoms. The second is now defined as “the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom.”

A network of government laboratories all over the world together average the measurement of hundreds of atomic clocks to produce International Atomic Time, the ultimate reference against which all other clocks are calibrated. Because the Earth is slowing, it’s necessary to occasionally introduce leap-seconds into these calibrations, so that noon stills falls when the sun is at its zenith in the sky.

But scientists are trying to push past even the incredible accuracy of traditional atomic clocks, striving to measure smaller and smaller slices of time. The seriously-awesome people at the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology have created the most accurate atomic clock ever, a so-called Quantum Fountain that measures time so accurately, it would take 60 million years of operation to be out just one second.