Back in 50's SciFi, everyone turned to the Scientists to save the world.Which raises the start of the ugly in the memeWar - how did reasoning as a skill mix get replaced by Machismo....
Now it is all mindless Action Heroes...
Amongst the obvious bits - there is that whole 'nuclear scientist as commie spy' thing - which helps light off the emotions about loyalty to the state, and the national security apparatus over the questions about who should have access to which open sourceable knowledge. Any fan of classical japanese sciFi has seen the 'international scientists' as the group willing to share knowledge, as if it were not productizable, financializable, marketable Intellectual Property that needed to be guarded as trade secrets in itself... Silly Evil International Scientists, who needs to worry about big scary monster opening land reform and marketable space in Tokio.... The rational expectations of the market will make it all priced to move.... and to oppose the Imaginary Invisible hand of the Market is to Attack FreeDome itself...
Equally true is the ecoTerrorista problems, where the science became little more than the manifestation of the evil Kult Of Korporate Amerikkka that was all about profits over people... But I fear that this is a smaller thread line in the devaluation of science as a way of doing knowledge management.
If anything, I fear that it was the practical absurdities that helped us 'financialize' america - since we learned, for a while, that currency manipulation was more important than actually creating the goods and services that americans, and the rest of the planet wanted. So why should BillJoeBob worry about learning that hard stuff about science. When the faster path is making the right types of connections, so that one gets into the right kliques.... and from there into the fast track to stacks and stacks of CASH... To being the Inside Man.
So what if the solution is going to require that we start up the process of making knowing well, a gooder thing to do? What if a core part of the current crisis of faith, will require that we restore the 'great compression' - so that we find better ways to deal with how we define value... and how we go about allocating it....
Or as one of the books we saw yesterday noted, The Balance of Nature: Ecology's Enduring Myth there are some myths which, well, need to go and live in the land of MMO's, and not in the policy making spaces....
What if it were really a good time to make sure that the Science Stuff, were Scientific, and not merely the echo chamber of the myths we would like to have... which apparently leads to a downward spiral, as science itself gets replaced by this seasons new fashionable pinkCrystalAromaNewAgePassionEnhancingSy
Hum... what if....
Why that way would be really problematic as we seek to work out the priorities, not only in education, but in the social organizations, and social networking....
Ah yes, protecting america from the threat of this seasons new AnnetteFunicelloFrankieAvalon post surrealist assault on reasoning, in a way that will still make it safe for teenagers to work on the unpleasant reality that YES, that Horrible Stack of Irrationalizing Hormonal Imbalances are just the tip of the iceberg that IntelligentDesign has some structural ISSUES!!!
But preferably in an appropriate manner...