Fusion Story Campaign

Posted by Rezwan on Jan 20, 2010 at 06:57 PM
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• The need for Storytellers:
  • Scientist Support
  • Visualizing the problem:  avoiding the “montage” urge
  • Visualizing the future:  Scenario building
  • Claiming humanity’s birthright in this quest.
• Goals & Outcome Objectives
• Leveraging story to change awareness | attitude | knowledge |  behavior |  outcomes
• Methods:
• Develop Fusion Message for public
• Collaboration with other science/art bridging organizations
• Storyteller Committment to fusion
• Explore the fusion story - slow down the montage.
• Host salons and media events
• Develop deliverables for publicity and fiscal support of fusion
• Evaluation:  How to measure the utility of this campaign
• Budget:  What kind of resources do we need for this campaign?

The Need for Storytellers

Rallying Public Support for Fusion Scientists

Brilliant scientists are on the front lines of physics, grappling with the plasma dragon, trying to squeeze fusion out of it. 

For most of us, their work is too abstract.  Our ears shut off at “phys…”  And so we leave the hard core fusion physicists to pursue their research, go to Congress for funding.  We expect them to send us a press release when it’s all done (in 50 years?) at which point we’ll consume the energy.  That’s all we are in this story.  Idle consumers.

Unfortunately, It’s hard to tame plasma dragons without support.  This “leave it alone” policy means that fusion is underfunded.  Our scientists face a formidable technological “threshold guardian”, while under perpetual threat of budget cuts.  They have had to make the “tough choices” which means that promising research possibilities have been “down-selected” - axed.  To reverse this, Congress and the fusion research community need to know there is strong public support for their work.

Scientists need social validation.  They need policies that give them permission to explore.  They need cash.  Misconceptions about fusion need to be cleared up. 

Visualizing the problem: avoiding the “montage” urge

Trying to solve a major human problem….

Technology is fairly good at controlling external reality to promote real biological fitness, but it’s even better at delivering fake fitness—subjective cues of survival and reproduction without the real-world effects. Having real friends is so much more effort than watching Friends. Actually colonizing the galaxy would be so much harder than pretending to have done it when filming Star Wars or Serenity. The business of humanity has become entertainment, and entertainment is the business of feeding fake fitness cues to our brains.

Visualize the problem - we are having a hard time getting the challenge in perspective. 
The “oversell” dilemma & the Neil Degrasse way.

Bridge gap between fantasy and reality - how are you going to get there?  Don’t just dream about sci fi, make it so.

Visualizing the solution:  Scenarios

http://www.slate.com/id/2282651/
More people think of this, see for example, the Future Tense:  Here Be Dragons event which

is convening at Google DC a number of leading scientists, Internet thinkers, governance experts and science fiction writers to grapple with the challenge of governing an unchartered future.

It’s a quest!  All aboard!

We can’t let the scientists have all the fun.  In case it escaped your notice, fusion research is the classic quest for fire (give or take 10 billion°).  This is epic, mythic, primal.  It’s our story.  They’re singing our song.  Exploring the fusion story can help us get grounded, discover deeper roles (“consumer of final energy product” just isn’t that satisfying to me.  You?).  This is a fundamental, collective human quest and we should all participate in it, own it.  Or simply be present to it. 

Goals

  of bridging this is to create broader awareness, support and understanding for the fusion endeavor,  not (only) through dry facts and figures, but through emotional and gut level connections to what the challenges of fusion are all about.
Process:  Media events, connect w/ dudes and get into their films.  More docus, create a liason between physicsts and artists.
  (Outcome objectives list)  visualize the many dimensions of the problem.

To Get storytelling community actively committed to supporting the quest for fusion and to engaging in inspiring pro fusion projects.  To develop materials and relationships to help guide them in those efforts.  Connect scientists with artists.
Outcome objectives:  Changing awareness | attitude | knowledge |  behavior |  outcomes

METHODS: 

Develop working fusion message (Get scientists to work with storytellers to develop clearer message and communications)
Collaborate w/ orgs that are already bridging arts and sciences and try an incident command system approach to come up with events and campaigns along the way. (list)
Get storytellers committed to helping out and getting over the fake fitness problem.
Host salons, events and so forth to gether public attention.
Develop materials to better communicate w/ those folks.
Explore the fusion story - slow down the montage.
develop deliverables to help anchor the fantasy to real science, both educational and fiscal.

Assemble the characters & score their committment;
Fusion Community, Entertainment Community, artists, writers, dancers, etc.
Here are some of our ideal organizations:
EMA, Bridgers, Science house, Physics in movies
Science and entertainment exchange
Fusion community:  Outreach folk, policy folk,
(Status:  “we’ve heard about them.”  “They’ve heard of us”, “we’ve connected”, “we’re collaborating”)
Museums, school programs (plays)

Bring them together for discussions -  (Salons)
Note fusion community needs a bit of coaxing.  Not trusting of media - bad experience and not sure how to message their challenge (see oversold vs. neil degrasse). 
improve communication skills of fusion community,
improve understanding of entertainment community.
Explore the fusion community message:  What do you need, what is your story.  (Older Whiskey vs. all hands on deck)  Dream budget - help us see it.  Especially the smaller more accessible projects - university level.  Policy, finance, reframe.  what message do you want attention for?  Public support.
Workshops and improv:  Trash talking physicists, explaining plasma through dance, etc.

Explore story itself.  What is the fusion story?

As we see in the “reframe fusion” campaign, at present, the fusion story is not well told.

There are many negative messages about the fusion endeavor which distort and distract from the real challenges.  Correcting these perceptions can go a long way toward increasing support and funding for fusion, which in turn can improve the chances for fusion success.

This is not to say that we need better “fusion propaganda”.  In fact, a lot of the negative messages have interesting policy and organizational implications.  We need to stop ignoring them, or dismissing them as jokes, and instead explore them to uncover useful areas for action.

The “reframe” campaign tries to identify and correct false messages, and give perspective to the endeavor.  The story campaign goes further in exploring the fusion story.

The screenplay:  Genres - fusion themed in toto (fusion as the plot)
Adding elements of fusion into stories (fusion backdrop, fusion props)
Characters: (Threshold guardians, the scientist (taleb quote), nemesis, antagonist (big oil), protagonist…)
Comedy:  Trash talking physicists and Miss fusion guide to scientific discourse ettiquette.
Feeding the sports monster.
Story of the race/devices vs. Story of plasma-mysteries of the universe (personification of particles?)

Deliverables:

Inspiring, provocative stories
Clips to use in documentaries
DVD extras
Revisit our favorite fusion bits in movies and explain them.  Use these as stand alone in documentaries, and also add to rerelease of DVD’s for these films - portion of proceeds funds fusion research.
Monetize:  leverage film and consumer products and publicity to get attention for various universities and fusion projects.

Events:

Awards:  Best fusion in film
Museum events
Screen writing contest
Fusion film contest (you tube) winner gets shown at gala events
Fusion fashion shows
Fusion is hot campaign: Look good for fusion.
Improv workshops
Salons
A retreat with fusion community and some storytellers to discuss the message.

Examples: 

Book list link.
Film list link.  (The table - also link from “clips” request”)

*Other media: 

Film, TV, Documentaries, books, comics, fine art, fashion, music, opera, panels and pundits (highbrow), drill teams (put this on games?), graphic novel, video game, kabuki, acrylics, collage, finger puppets…and more!)