{"id":473,"date":"2016-11-30T15:16:25","date_gmt":"2016-11-30T23:16:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/wicnews\/?p=473"},"modified":"2016-12-01T15:12:26","modified_gmt":"2016-12-01T23:12:26","slug":"david-brin-sci-fi-sciencehumanities-collaborations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/wicnews\/2016\/11\/30\/david-brin-sci-fi-sciencehumanities-collaborations\/","title":{"rendered":"David Brin: From Sci Fi to Science\/Humanities Collaborations"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"davidbrinsparkposter\"<\/a><\/p>\n

By Claire Roth (MA 2017), WIC GTA<\/em><\/p>\n

Scientist and best-selling science fiction author David Brin visited Oregon State\u2019s campus in the beginning of October, an event made possible by the collaborative project \u201cSPARK: Arts + Science @ OSU.\u201d Brin gave a well-attended lecture open to the Corvallis community, visited classes and labs on campus, and conducted a small workshop and interdisciplinary conversation about sci-fi prototyping, all in the short time he spent with us. Brin talked enthusiastically about the potential for writing collaboration between the sciences and the humanities. His ideas could have an exciting impact on Oregon State\u2019s writing culture.<\/p>\n

To understand the potential for Brin\u2019s ideas to create more collaborative writing projects on campus, I asked two of our faculty, Dr. Raymond Malewitz and Dr. Bill Smart, to comment on Brin\u2019s lecture and workshop.<\/p>\n

Raymond Malewitz is an assistant professor in the School of Writing, Literature, and Film and is the director of the MA program in English. His research and writing projects primarily focus on the intersections between literature, science, environmental concerns, and material culture. Dr. Malewitz introduced David Brin before his lecture titled \u201cAdaptations: Storytelling in Novels and Film.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bill Smart is an associate professor in the School of Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering. His research in robotics aims primarily at the intersection between humans and robots. He also does work in machine learning with an emphasis on strategies for training long-term robot actions. Dr. Smart was one of the coordinators and facilitators of David Brin\u2019s workshop on sci-fi prototyping.
\n\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Question 1:<\/strong> David Brin made the comment that if a person can prove their chops, then they can invade other fields. Do you ever find yourself \u201cinvading\u201d other fields during your research? If so, which fields did you find most surprising or unexpected?<\/p>\n

Malewitz:<\/em> \u201cAs a scholar of science and lit, I invade fields all the time, which has led to some fascinating conversations with people far removed from English lit.\u00a0 Last year, I met with a veterinary scientist at OSU to discuss the surveillance of zoonotic diseases (diseases that spread between animals and humans).\u00a0 During the conversation, we both reflected on the significance of the fact that reverse zoonoses (humans infecting animals) are poorly represented in lit and culture, which may reflect upon our own biases regarding our status within the animal kingdom.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smart:<\/em> \u201cAll the time.\u00a0 Since I work in robotics, I’m forced to dabble in a lot of other fields to get things working.\u00a0 I’m a computer scientist by training, but I dip into mechanical engineering, mathematics, psychology, art, and a number of other fields in the course of my research.\u00a0 None of this is particularly deep, but I do get the chance to talk to and collaborate with domain experts in all of these areas.\u00a0 I find psychology the most unexpected, since it’s the field that I know least about.\u00a0 It’s also the one where I think that I learn the most, probably because of the excellent set of collaborators that I work with.\u201d<\/p>\n

Question 2:<\/strong> Brin described science fiction writing as \u201cspeculative history,\u201d then connected the idea to the workshop by calling it an exercise in \u201cspeculative technology.\u201d To what extent does speculation appear in your field? What kinds of speculative work do you find yourself doing?<\/p>\n

Malewitz:<\/em> \u201cSpeculative fiction is near and dear to me.\u00a0 In recent articles, I\u2019ve written about how emerging and future technologies affect human behavior and our sense of orientation within the world\u2014something that fiction can do quite well.\u00a0 For example, I\u2019ve become interested in the ways that enormous clean energy projects\u2014wind and solar farms, etc.\u2014affect our understanding of regionalism, which in American literature tends to be preoccupied with natural rather than artificial elements of the landscape.\u00a0 I\u2019ve also written about a great recent novel by Gary Shteyngart called Super Sad True Love Story<\/em>, which speculates on the future (or current) effects of social media on politics.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smart:<\/em> \u201cI think that, in robotics, you [speculate] all the time.\u00a0 You have to imagine how these new things will change our lives, and how they will integrate with the way we do things now.\u00a0 Part of that is doing what-if experiments with technology, and then trying to close the gap between what we can do now and the scenario the what-if creates.\u00a0 My hunch is that a lot of research proceeds in this way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Question 3:<\/strong> One of the results of our time with David Brin is a possibility for collaborative projects between writers, scientists, and engineers here at Oregon State. What do you think your field could gain from this collaborative relationship? What kinds of projects would you hope to see evolve?<\/p>\n

Malewitz:<\/em> \u201cSome great collaborative possibilities are starting to emerge at OSU under the umbrella category of \u201cEnvironmental Humanities,\u201d which attempts to represent the dynamic features of our environment in ways similar to the manner by which historians, literary scholars, and philosophers represent human activity.\u00a0 This fusion works quite nicely when applied to things that fall between the categories of the social and natural worlds, including anthropogenic climate change, stem cell research, and artificial modes of human and nonhuman reproduction.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smart:<\/em> \u201cI’d really like to see a science fiction prototyping group emerge here on campus.\u00a0 A group of people familiar with the technologies we use (particularly in robotics, which is my thing), who write short, near-future speculative fiction to frame the sorts of technological and ethical questions that we should be thinking about today.\u00a0 Ideally this group would comprise both writers and technologists, since getting us to think critically about our technology is an important part of the process.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most of our WIC Program focuses on writing as it appears in our separate disciplines. David Brin\u2019s visit and the enthusiasm of both Dr. Malewitz and Dr. Smart prove there is something to be said for writing across disciplines as well. We work hard to prepare students to write well during their professional lives. It\u2019s also worthwhile to remind students while they are here that they have an opportunity for collaboration unique to college life. Where else but a college campus is it so convenient to explore writing with someone outside your discipline? My hope for our campus is to see the collaborative projects described above come to life as our writing culture at Oregon State continues to grow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Claire Roth (MA 2017), WIC GTA Scientist and best-selling science fiction author David Brin visited Oregon State\u2019s campus in the beginning of October, an event made possible by the collaborative project \u201cSPARK: Arts + Science @ OSU.\u201d Brin gave a well-attended lecture open to the Corvallis community, visited classes and labs on campus, and… Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8196,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[717010,367,135623],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall-2016","category-interviews","category-visiting-scholars"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/wicnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/wicnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/wicnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/wicnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8196"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/wicnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/wicnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":546,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/wicnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473\/revisions\/546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/wicnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/wicnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/wicnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}