Bear with me. Here's something I included in a presentation recently:
- Social Media already embraced by numerous conferences – related to physical sciences, engineering and beyond
- Twitter, viewed by many as a not-quite-respectable source of questionable information, is leveraged with effectiveness by..
- AIP, Elsevier, other science publishers
- Dozens of highly respected manufacturers of instrumentation and software for science
- NSF, APS, Stanford University, CNRS, Max Planck Society
- NFL, MLB, NBA, MLB
- POTUS, The White House
- The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Times Magazine
- Eric Clapton
I'll admit I typed the first line tongue-in-cheek. While informal, this blog is about science and technology. In our realm, ideas are demonstrated to be valid by being subjected to evaluation, criticism and possibly experimentation. As a result, many ideas are proved to be "wrong" -- not valuable in making predictions, not useful in solving problems or, say... strengthening relationships/alliances.
Readers are invited to list ways in which they see social media being put to good use in S&T. You may wish to alert us to dangers, disadvantages, pitfalls....
Personally, I am impressed and delighted by the way APS and ACS are using Facebook and Twitter to make Physics (and Physicists); Chemistry (and Chemists) increasingly accessible to the general population. At the same time, I'd speculate they are influencing young students in their career choices, while validating those who have already selected these fields.
