Tom Wakeford wants a boogie board
 
How many academics can send a photo via Bluetooth?

This question crossed my mind at a workshop on the future of rural areas. The participants, half of whom were aged between thirteen and eighteen, imagined different futures for the areas where they lived. Some foresaw a world in which they could go to and from a friend’s house in a neighbouring village via affordable public transport. Others explored what policy changes would be needed for them to be able to have a future livelihood in such areas, which are currently in serious economic decline.

Even the least well-off of them brandished mobiles, some of which enabled them to take videos. If their phone had Bluetooth, they swapped these images with their friends. 

Share expertise
Many of those practising citizen engagement, me among them, are doubtful that any technological ‘magic bullet’ can solve the democratic deficit in the science and innovation process. The very manufacturing process of a mobile is a greater cause of social and environmental injustices than most others.

However, in a country where there are now more mobile phones than there are people, harnessing the capacity for these devices to allow people who exist outside university walls to share the expertise they have gained by experience with those inside, seems at least worth thinking about.

One leading mobile phone company has now begun exploring what might be possible in this area with us at the Centre for Life and Newcastle and Durham Universities. Another has offered a mobile phone-based interface that might allow people to share knowledge about their particular neighbourhood. 

Academic resistance
While researching this collaboration, I found that some of my colleagues actively resist learning how to send a text message. Meanwhile their students are rating video clips of their best and worst lectures on YouTube. The new generation of mobile phones are technologies where people without much formal education can join professors on a more equal footing by teaching them a thing or two about IT.

Take Professor Skawdin (not his real name). Though not normally prone to nightmares, he drifts off into a disturbing dream one day after a heavy lunch. In it he encounters a group of hoodies at a bus stop. As he gets closer, he sees that they are videoing each other on their mobile phones acting out scenes from the Holy Bible, Koran and Bhagavad-Gita. Here’s what I think might happen next.

Skawdin – Why aren’t you at school?

Mary – We’re learning theories about how we got here, Mr Skawdin. This is better than stupid lessons. Have you seen this website, mister?

Alyas – Cool! Wanna see my MP4 of Mary acting out the serpent bit from the Book of Genesis, mister? I’ll Bluetooth it.

Skawdin – Blue? Tooth? Is that one of your Biblical animals? What’s an earth is an MP4?
Is it a mathematical formula?

Mary – Get with the programme Granddad! Don’t you have a mobile?

Skawdin – Well yes… for emergencies… but it
doesn’t play music.

Alyas – You wanna get in touch with the times. My mobile is a calculator and does formulas. You’re missing out on a lot of good knowledge. Downloads, networked knowledge. It’s the future, innit?

Skawdin – I saw your religious books. You’re just blindly accepting what parents and
priests teach you.

Mary – You need to get real, mister. We don’t go to see no priests. We’re acting out different
‘myths’. Last week we did myths that are pushed by your lot. We downloaded chunks of Science as Salvation, by that old-school philosopher Midgley.

Skawdin – Oh, her! Anyway, I can’t stand around talking to little ragamuffins who think the world was created in seven days (thinks: not unless I can sell the idea to Channel 4). You are Creationists aren’t you?

Alyas – Dunno granddad. We’re just treating it as one hypothesis for human origins that has extremely weak evidential support. Sounds reasonable to me.

Mary – Aw, poor Prof. We got to get back to making our video project now, mister, but we’ll Bluetooth ya Prof. Reiss‘s new eBook Teaching About Scientific Origins: Taking Account of Creationism. That’ll set you right.

Alyas – Next week we’re going to compare Neo-Darwinian memes to some of the myths our grandparents believed in.

Skawdin – Look, there are just three things are needed to distinguish myths from facts – academic colloquia, peer-reviewed journal articles and citation indices. 

Mary and Alyas in unison – Three? That’s your Holy trinity!

Tom Wakeford is based at Newcastle and Durham Universities and the Centre for Life as Director-designate of their Beacon for Public Engagement