PClick here to read each of the contributions in an individually printable file

There's a simple story that sums up the perils of global terrorism. "Once there were two people sitting in a rowboat. One suddenly started making a hole on his side of the boat. The other screamed. The first countered and said, 'What do you care what I do on my side of the boat?'"

 Todd Siler

In your search for a new Science Advisor, I strongly recommend that you select an individual who has as much common sense as he or she has accomplishments in the sciences. Equally important, this open minded advisor needs to approach our world of interrelated problems with a systems view of things, which is something compartmentalized thinkers struggle with conceptually. This systems view is essential for effectively dealing with the web of gnarly problems that entangle nations and strain international relations.

In reviewing the list of challenging scientific issues that need your immediate attention, few strike me as being as important as fighting the war on terror. But fighting it to win in both the short and long run. As the world wrestles with how to best respond to terrorism in the wake of September 11—and as our nation grapples with the lethal threats of tyrants and their irrational actions—your advisory board needs to be as agile and open to the possibilities of a "chance discovery" as an inventor on the verge of a major breakthrough.

Sparking breakthrough thinking and accelerating innovation are two of my specialties and passions. If I was fortunate enough to serve as a member of your ad hoc committee on terrorism, I would suggest taking the following course of action:

I'd help organize a maverick group of professional thinkers (scientists, engineers, artists, educators, scholars, policy-makers, and polymaths), and invite them to delve into a pool of obvious and deep questions concerning national security.

I'd compare this exploratory work to the adventurous endeavors undertaken by the American military strategist and futurist, Herman Kahn, founder of the Hudson Institute think-tank and author of On Thermonuclear War. Ideally, I would hope to see the creative energies invested here parallel that of other intensely focused science-technology-civil society-oriented projects in the past; imagine a sort of Manhattan Project for Peaceful Solutions or a small scale Pugwash Conference (without any formal conference which comes with a certain structure that can inhibit the free exchange of ideas). Our group would scope out a long-term strategic vision for securing our nation and safeguarding the world from the projected charges and potential damage of "rogue elephants."

Note that we would engage in this collaborative envisioning activity using some unconventional, yet proven, techniques of communication that involve symbolic modeling. One outcome of this work would be a set of tactical, implementation plans. These practical plans could then be evaluated and contrasted with the research-based recommendations of groups such as the Rand Corporation, among other solution providers.

They could also be run through the mill of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats (SWOT) analysis, a business practice I'm quite familiar with having facilitated many strategic planning sessions for executive officers of Fortune 500 Companies.

The types of open-ended questions this ad hoc group might consider responding to could include the following:

• How do we foresee the forces of terrorism growing during this decade? How will this growth impact our collective future? Describe these forces.

• What are some non-military solutions for stemming further acts of aggression against our principles and practices of democracy?

• How will this constant presence of terrorism profoundly affect the American way of life as well as our dreams for improving the state of the world?

• How will terrorism affect our advanced warfare programs and defense policies?

• Is there any way to avoid the inevitable build up of weapons of mass destruction in defense of by attacking civil liberties and basic human rights for all?

• How can our world community do a better job of policing renegade groups of people and organizations whose raison d'etre seems to be to spread anarchy and other forms of social unrest?

• Other than U.N. disarmament resolutions, what additional agreements would we need to have securely in place in order to begin to abolish of chemical and biological warfare (CBW) programs? Specifically, how will the advancement of these programs help our prospects for a lasting peace?

• What benefits will the next generation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons "offer" us which an improvement in human communication cannot?

These are merely a handful of basic questions that come to mind at the moment. Any one of them could be explored by this group of thinkers using the tools of science and common sense to solve this gravest of problems: fighting a war on terror that doesn't perpetuate the cycle of violence but rather prevents it by fostering a new understanding. The main task of this group would be to find more ingenious ways of dismantling this Gordian Knot of political, ideological and religious beliefs other than reaching into that old Pandora's Box and taking out another weapon to whack away at our worst primal fears.

Clearly we have much more scientific work to do to better understand the nature of fear and terror, and to recognize the patterns of ineffective responses to these phenomena. Whenever our brute fears overpower our rationality trouble abounds.

Finally, we need to explore our deepest, most ambiguous questions about the roots of terrorism that have as much to do with science as they do with philosophy and religion. Naturally, your new Science Advisor needs to handle this reality with the utmost sensitivity. And the advisory board needs to value the fact that there's always more than one viable solution to any given problem, when viewed from many perspectives. Without this broader and deeper exploration, our world may remain pinned and pained by the headlock we're in.

There's a simple story that sums up the perils of global terrorism. "Once there were two people sitting in a rowboat. One suddenly started making a hole on his side of the boat. The other screamed. The first countered and said, 'What do you care what I do on my side of the boat?'" I thank you for caring about the hole in our boat. Now you need to get the rest of the world on board about caring too.

Todd Siler
Founder & Director, Psi-Phi Communications, LLC.
Former advisory board member of the Council on Art, Science, Technology at M.I.T.
Author of Think Like A Genius and Breaking the Mind Barrier

The type of research we pursue is not as important as the horizon.

Philip Brockman

Today I retire from 43-year career as a physicist for NASA. I look back to when I began working at Langley Research Center in 1959. At that time, NASA research centers had a base program and there was no expectation that our research was to be applied. My goal at that time was to work on long term problems and solutions.

The current method in government research is to work on projects with a one or two year payoff. This is where our nation's corporations have gone in the last few years. Government is now following corporate America's lead in pursuing instant gratification rather than research which reaches over the horizon. It is now an MBA-driven culture, one which is anithetical to the long horizon stuff that inevitably leads to future breakthroughs.

I have had a wonderful career at NASA and I've been at the edge as I watched research from our laboratories change the world. But I am not pleased with the direction the agency is now pursuing, and I regret that a young physicist now beginning his or her career will not have the same opportunities I have had to dream, to explore their vision. This is to the detriment of NASA and to our nation.

The one big lesson I have learned in 43 years as a scientific researcher: the type of research we pursue is not as important as the horizon.

Philip Brockman
Physicist
Distinguished Research Associate
NASA—Langley Research Center

  Science and the nation are inextricably intertwined. The economic and military strength of the county is based upon the technologies that have sprung from our basic science research. Likewise our medical system is fully dependent on a mixture of medical research and physical sciences detector development. Thus the health, well being, safety of our country's citizens depends very directly on the technological fruits of scientific research.

George F. Smoot

Dear President Bush,

Standard Long Term Analysis in Style of Business and Government

Science and the nation are inextricably intertwined. The economic and military strength of the county is based upon the technologies that have sprung from our basic science research. Likewise our medical system is fully dependent on a mixture of medical research and physical sciences detector development. Thus the health, well being, safety of our country's citizens depends very directly on the technological fruits of scientific research.

If the USA is to remain the premier nation on Earth, then it must maintain a robust scientific research program. The appropriate level is open to societal debate; however, many businesses, e.g. drug companies and advanced electronic companies, have developed guidelines at a few percent of their total budget. The issue is not can the country afford this level of expense, but whether it can afford not to continue an active, high-quality basic research program.

In terms of defense this is obvious. One only needs to ask the question: What would be the consequence if some other country to develop a new energy-directed or new generation bio-weapon, before the US did and created countermeasures? However, that same thing is true for major new technologies in the economic and health arenas? Basic scientific research is so key to the long-term viability of the nation, that even though the pay off is often years out, it is current priority. Change can be so rapid in technology that ten years is often two generations.

A strong scientific research program is not sufficient alone. Clearly, there must be sufficient infrastructure. The most key ingredient is a scientifically literate work force and general population. Just as it is clearly wise to invest in science, investment in education (science, mathematics, critical thinking) is better than exporting technical jobs, electronically or otherwise, to other countries (e.g. India, Russia, etc.) with stronger educational systems. No matter how good an infrastructure the nation has, it still must have the people to run it and the scientists and engineers to create and design the next generations. It is hard to believe that the country would hire foreign mercenaries for military and daily operations.

At present we enjoy a very good lifestyle. The primary question for the nation and civilization as a whole is: What is it that allows this? What has been the big change since the stone age? What steps can we take to keep this and progress to the next level? Are humans smarter, harder working, or any another way significantly better raw material now than in the stone age? One surmises most of the difference in physical attributes can be ascribed to better nutrition and medical care.

The Human Future for Stone-Age Man?

It appears in fact that most humans use our technological infrastructure to live a lifestyle with which a stone-age human could readily identify. People live in shelters—houses or apartments rather than caves. The go out daily to make their livelihood—now in SUVs, cars, commuter trains rather than most by foot. People gather by electronic fires (TV) or in bars ­most probably more isolated than the stone-age clans. In general the bulk of people live in, exploit, and make up a large cultural and technological infrastructure. They take advantage of the base accumulated by humanity.

Nearly all the advances are made by a very small fraction of the population—the innovators—mostly scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs. The society and nation, which encourages, nurtures, and makes this innovation possible and exploits it, will proper in many ways.

Humans as a whole really have not have changed basically since the stone age. Natural selection has not really changed humans since humans became the dominant species. In some regions local culture has instilled in its people respect for law and human life but even in those places the people will go to war when threatened. Other regions tribal and clan clashes are a way of life.

If the bulk of humans have not advanced physically, intellectually and socially over the stone age milieu, then new technology can be as easily used for terrorist and criminal activities as for neutral and beneficial activities. Thus as technology improves, the potential for devastating acts of terrorism continues to increase. The logical end would be when it is possible for a small group or single individual to destroy all life on Earth.

For economic, medical, and likely military motivations it is likely that many areas of technology will continue to develop and its potential for positive or negative consequences will increase. This means that, if humans are not changed significantly physically different, then we must understand how to develop a world culture that rejects suicide attacks and then eventually violence to resolve conflict. This would requires a whole program: (1) a better understanding of why people form cults and groups that support such activities, (2) understanding and removing the reservoir of young people (e.g. HAMAS recruits, Jim Jones cult,) (3) demagogic and totalitarian leaders and societies. This is a mixture of social and political science studies and actual programs.

The first step is to assess the various issues and determine what programs can be put in place in the short run and what research should begin soon. Then developing a longer-term program to reduce the threat of terrorism both by technical robustness and by social efforts. Note that El Al is most successful through focusing on the people rather than relying on sophisticated technology. Intelligence comes first and then attention to people. We would prefer not to be in the position of Israel as a country suffering terrorist activities on a very frequent and regular basis. It costs much in terms of casualties, economic, and military activities without any end in sight.

As long as terrorism can be kept at a low level in the country, then the USA can continue most of its development including the scientific research for the future. We also need to invest in the twin programs of being robust against terrorist acts and an active program to convert potential terrorists into positively contributing members of society. Rather than nation building we must engage in civilization building.

The path I did not mention was to stop or slow dramatically scientific research and the development of new technologies and hope or search for a new stability. We cannot stop things completely because other countries already have significant scientific and technological capability. Already third-rate countries, such as Iraq and North Korea, are able to have advanced welcome programs. We could enter new dark ages, the Nuclear Dark Ages or Weapons of Mass Destruction Dark Ages. I don't mean nuclear winter from the exchange of thousands of nuclear weapons; but a more gradual but catastrophe filled deterioration. In the new Dark Ages there will be a repeat of regional wars, blackmail and spoils of war, occasional small nuclear exchanges, all of these leading to a spiraling down of civilization.

George F. Smoot
Professor of Physics
University of California at Berkeley
Leader. NASA's COBE (Cosmic Background Explorer) Team
Author (with Keay Davidson) of Wrinkles In Time

 Advocate technology as a learning partner across the curriculum. This strategy is important for improving learning, developing computer literacy, and for inviting a variety of users, including girls, into technology.

Sherry Turkle

The Gender Gap In The Computer Culture

There has been much interest in the digital divide as it pertains to inequities between the poor and the rich. There is another digital divide that threatens to limit scientific productivity and scope. This is the inequity in the numbers of women who participate in the computer culture. The computer culture is still, in the main, made by engineers for engineers and by men for men. Girls are less likely to take high-level computing classes in high school, and comprised just 17 percent of those taking Advanced Placement Computer Science exams. Girls outnumbered boys only in their enrollment in "word processing" classes, arguably the contemporary version of a typing class. In 1995, at the post-secondary level, women received one in four of the Computer/Information Sciences bachelor's degrees and only 11 percent of the Ph.D.'s in Engineering-related technologies. These educational gaps reverberate in the workplace, where by most estimates women today occupy only 20 percent of the jobs in Information Technology.

A recent study of middle school and high school girls, commissioned by the American Association of University Women made it clear that gender inequity in digital culture is increasing. One goal is to get more girls into the "pipeline" to computer-related careers. This could, of course, be an end in itself, but diversity in participation would also mean a richer digital culture. Digital culture (not so far away from a world that asked users if they wanted to "abort, terminate, or fail" processes running on their machines) could be positively transformed through the integration of girls' and women's insights and life experiences. So one of the values in getting more girls and women interested in the computer pipeline is that their greater presence may transform the computer culture overall; by the same token, changes in the e-culture itself—the ways technology is discussed, valued, and applied—would invite more girls and women to participate fully in that culture, to become computer fluent.

This comment on values reflects the fact that today women seem to be disenfranchised in the computer culture for cultural rather than intellectual reasons. When young women are asked about their attitudes towards computing they almost never report overt discrimination, but at the same time, when asked to describe a person who is "really good with computers" they describe a man. And most of them do not predict that they will want to learn more about or become more involved with computers in the future. These girls are not computer phobic, they are "computer reticent." They say that they are not afraid but simply do not want to get involved. They express a "we can, but I don't want to" philosophy. Girls' views of computer careers, and of the computer culture—including software, games, and Internet environments—tend to reproduce stereotypes about a "computer person" as male and antisocial, Women no longer (as they once did) see computing as "too hard" for them. Earlier generations of women said, Women can't be involved in technical professions, "We can't but I want to." Girls and young women today seem to be saying, Women can do computing, "We can, but I don't want to!" This position is usually accompanied by a characterization of the computer as it has been presented to them at school as infused with values that they cannot identify with. Simply put: the computer culture is presented as a world which emphasizes technical capacity, speed, and efficiency. It estranges a broad array of learners, many girls included, who do not identify with the wizardry of computer aficionados and have little interest in the purely technical aspects of the machines. The computer culture has become linked to a characteristically masculine worldview, such that women too often feel they need to choose between the cultural associations of "femininity" and those of "computers," a cliché that has proven resistant to the growing diversity of information technology and its users. Girls discuss information technology-related careers not as too difficult, but as a "waste of intelligence." Insists a young woman from Baltimore, "Guys just like to do that: sit in a cubicle all day." In talking about their lack of desire to continue learning about computers, girls also focus on the violence and cruelty of current video games and see a culture that they do not want to participate in. They are happy to play social simulation games and chat with their friends, but see their identity on the computer as that of "users," not the empowered.

Their teachers have given them little to inspire them. Teacher education has stressed the "technical" side of things: Education schools tend to give instruction in basic technical skills rather than on how to integrate computers into the curriculum. A 1999 national survey found that only 29 percent of teachers had six or more hours of curriculum-integration instruction, whereas 42 percent had that amount of basic-skills training. In the study by the American Association of University Women of 2000, only 30% of teachers ranked as "sophisticated" in their use of computers report that they received any technology training in an undergraduate or master's teacher education program, which probably reflects in part responses from older teachers. Only 11 percent of the total teachers who were polled report that they received training specifically in how to apply or integrate computer technology into their lesson plans. Thus, current teacher-training practices emphasize short technical courses on connectivity and hardware. Preservice teachers make it clear that they start their jobs uninformed about what the technology is supposed to accomplish for their classrooms, either educationally or socially.

Our current approach to teacher training focuses on the technical properties of hardware; it does not emphasize educational applications or innovative uses of computing across the curriculum. Yet what teachers need is sustained and ongoing education about how to integrate technology with curricular materials and information about how to make technology part of a humanistic classroom culture, so essential for bringing girls into the picture. This latter approach would create better informed teachers as well as multiple entry points to computer competence for both students and teachers. The prevailing emphasis on the "mechanics of computer operation" does not respond to this need. As one teacher put it: "Without teacher education, it won't matter if each student has his/her own computer. We teachers hate having thousands of dollars of equipment thrown at us and being told to use it when we have no clue how to go about it"

There are many points of entry to address this problem. All require research and educational imagination in curriculum planning. All would make the computer culture more vibrant and relevant for women as well as men, and ultimately for us all.

• Advocate technology as a learning partner across the curriculum. This strategy is important for improving learning, developing computer literacy, and for inviting a variety of users, including girls, into technology. The infusion of technology across the curriculum also recognizes and supports multiple entry points into technology. Some learners may develop a fluency with information technology through music, some through mathematics, and others through the arts.

• Enforce a distinction between using the computer as a tool (teaching students how to use powerpoint) and using computation to inspire new ways of thinking and learning. It is the second that will inspire young minds to believe that there are rich rewards in staying with the subject.

• Professional development for teachers, both preservice and inservice, needs to emphasize not simply how computer technology works but on how it can spark creativity across disciplines. There appear to be a group of learners, predominantly young men, who are willing to throw themselves into computing, presented as a technical puzzle. But given the integration of computing into culture, those in the field need to have broader interests and motivation for being there. Improving the way computation is introduced in education will thus not only draw in young women and keep them from dropping out, it holds our only chance of having a more broadly based computer culture for all of us.

Sherry Turkle
Director, Initiative on Technology and Self
MIT
Author of Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet and The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit.

 Rather than fixate on controlling greenhouse gases, which are politically hard to suppress, I suggest a new, innovative research program directed at the central global problem: warming. A partial cure can come from simple methods, until now little studied.

Gregory Benford

Mr President:

Prudence alone should lead you to ask the scientific establishment to study new, less costly methods of dealing with a global problem—the possibility of climate change. It is time to require more inventive thinking on this issue.

In his recent letter to you, William Calvin pointed out that shifting ocean currents could trigger big shifts in weather. Rather than fixate on controlling greenhouse gases, which are politically hard to suppress, I suggest a new, innovative research program directed at the central global problem: warming. A partial cure can come from simple methods, until now little studied.

They are:

1) Increase the overall reflection of sunlight from the planet as a whole. Here simple methods may work well. Trigger more cloud cover over the tropical oceans. Color rooftops and blacktop roads lighter, to lessen absorption. These ideas are fairly simple, and some field work on them has been done. They do need study to make them efficient and effective.

2) Hide carbon in the deep oceans. This keeps it from making carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for about 1000 years. Most biospheric carbon is already in the oceans anyway, and they can take a good deal more.

3) Push innovative energy research. Hand Ray Orbach at DOE the paper by Hoffert et al, in Science 298, (p 981, 2002) and ask him to implement its suggestions. You should also probably help develop nuclear power in the most needy areas of the developing nations. With safeguards against nuclear proliferation, this could cut down on the default choice many are using—coal burning plants.

These approaches need further research, and should be fashioned into off-the-shelf technologies. If in the next decade alarm bells go off, warning of an approaching big wrench in our global climate, we can then reach for these methods. Whatever one's position on global warming, it is prudent to be prepared with a strategy that goes beyond just nay-saying to the Kyoto Protocols.

Gregory Benford
Professor of Physics at University of California, Irvine
Author of Deep Time

 The problem of political and religious fanaticism is beyond the scope separately of psychology, political science, or historical study. An interdisciplinary program building upon current efforts but addressing the issues with the use of multiple methods is needed.

Vera John-Steiner

For a while after the defeat of Fascism and Nazism in the Second World War, there was a hope for an era of enlightenment. It was thought that a scientific understanding of its sources could help avoid a repetition of the fascist nightmare. The Authoritarian Personality by Theodor Adorno and co authors was a well known effort to achieve such understanding.

Today political and religious fanaticisms are a source of world wide anxiety. Al Qaeda is the most frightening at present. But it is not only Islamic fanaticism that leads to atrocities. The Oklahoma City bombing, mass murders of Moslems by Hindu mobs in India, the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin in Israel and of Martin Luther King in Nashville were the work of non-Islamic fanatics.

The torture-murder of a young gay man in Wyoming, the bombing of abortion clinics, the torching of black churches and of Jewish synagogues, all were associated with fanatical beliefs and movements.

Legislative, military, and educational solutions are proposed and undertaken, but without any prior understanding of how fanaticism is being fostered, both wittingly and unwittingly, or what causes certain fanatical individuals to resort to individual or mass murder. Neither is it well understood what factors or measures might counteract or inhibit fanatical violence. At present, specialists concerned with these issues focus either on social antecedents (including political, economic and religious factors) or on personality variables .
.
The problem of political and religious fanaticism is beyond the scope separately of psychology, political science, or historical study. An interdisciplinary program building upon current efforts but addressing the issues with the use of multiple methods is needed. Such a proposal is made while recognizing that no single approach, however carefully planned, can fully meet the challenge of fanaticism in contemporary society. But a major and well-planned study, devoted to causes and solutions, could make a contribution to the urgent task of decreasing fanatical violence. President Bush should initiate such a program as a scientific response to the sense of incomprehension and despair so prevalent in the world at present.

Vera John-Steiner
Presidential Professor, University of New Mexico
Author of Notebooks of the Mind and Creative Collaboration