Michael Buckland's notes on Emanuel Goldberg, with links to other resources.

"Emanuel Goldberg (Portrait) was born in Moscow, Russia, in 1881, a chemist, inventor, and industrialist who contributed to almost all aspects of imaging technology in the first half of the twentieth century: photographic sensitometry, reprographics, standardized film speeds, color printing (moiré effect), aerial photography, extreme microphotography (microdots), optics, camera design (the Contax), the important, early hand-held Kinamo movie camera, and early television technology. He received his doctorate from Wilhelm Ostwald's institute in Leipzig in 1906."

Check out this post by Vince LiCata at World’s Fair about initiatives to get “accurate science” into the movies. Seems that the National Academy of Sciences is sponsoring an exchange to match producers with scientists, while the National Science Foundation is sending researchers to campuses to give film students perspective on research and visualization methodologies, all in an effort to align depictions of science with how it is actually practiced.

Is this a good idea? Do we need “more accurate” science in the movies? What kind of accuracy are we talking about? This objective is surely worthwhile, but maybe not in the way that it seems on the surface.

First, some details. Here’s LiCata’s outline of the NAS program.

The Science and Entertainment Exchange has thus far largely centered on getting more plausible science into science fiction films. They acknowledge that Sci-fi is far from real science, but also acknowledge that Sci-fi films almost always contain a nugget of real science from which the fantastical non-real science is grown, and that even Sci-fi films with no accurate science in them can provide “teachable moments” – where one can discuss (with a class of students) the physics of how the Flash might really be able to stop a bullet, or what the gravity on Krypton must be like in order for Superman to have the apparent flight power he has on Earth. They also clearly understand that many people go into science because of really good science fiction, like Star Trek. The bulk of what seems to be going on so far, however, is helping filmmakers maintain some semblance of logic in their Sci-fi (which, unfortunately isn’t quite the same as getting accurate science into the movies) …

So if it’s not clarifying science, what is the Exchange up to? It’s website explains that it seeks to help filmmakers out by

Providing the credibility and the verisimilitude upon which quality entertainment depends – and which audiences have come to expect. Drawing on the deep knowledge of the scientific community, we can collaborate on narrative and visual solutions to a variety of problems while contributing directly to the creativity of the content in fresh and unexpected ways.

This platitudinous statement is not helpful. For one thing, the tone makes the scientists seem like consultants at best and sycophants at worst, which is a poor rhetorical position to occupy if your goal is to emphasize the authority of real scientists over depictions of their theories. And the substance of this statement is also false. Audiences expect neither credibility nor verisimilitude unless you ask them to expect it. I wonder how frequently the average parent shields their child’s eyes from a screen full of junk science. Is there any evidence that this actually happens? You’re the National Academy of Sciences, for crying out loud, where’s your data?

And there’s a more transparent problem, too: credibility and verisimilitude are not the same thing. A film can be credible to its own framework without being verisimilar at all. Actually, the whole shtick of speculative fiction is to form its own conditions for credibility — that’s the appeal of the genre — so to measure it using a putatively “objective” metric is to mistake the sorts of achievement it tries to make. Indeed, a more scrupulous mimicry of actuality will narrow the horizon of speculation and thereby foreclose credibility.

Too much fact in science fiction is like too much marriage in erotica.

Okay, let’s look at the NSF enterprise, the “Creative Science Studio” or CS2, which was unveiled at a panel at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. LiCata again,

The speakers in this session included the director Ron Howard, who is part of the collaborative, and who spoke about the preparations and hours of study he puts into films like “A Beautiful Mind,” “Apollo 13″, and even “Backdraft”. [...] The CS2 was effectively born at this session, so it doesn’t have a track record yet, but their stated goals are to focus on movies about and containing real science, and to stay away from science fiction. They also state that they want to help scientists make better documentaries and better visual based teaching tools.

This is a smashing good idea. Not only would I love to see more films about scientists (and clinicians and naturalists), but wouldn’t it be great to see the scientific habit of thought at work in a wider series of dramatic situations? Whether they know it or not, people solve scientific problems and perform experiments constantly — with varying degrees of success. Those activities are at least as reflective of the human character as the passions that normally steam up celluloid, and films that emphasize this point would really be “fresh and unexpected.”

Besides, the conceptual and practical collaboration between science and film is hardly new. The sciences have always been about turning observation into knowledge, while films have been in the business of both expanding observability and even, paradoxically, of making the visible. Nowadays, both fields are undertaking new types of visualization thanks to new media. By doing so together filmmakers and scientists could not merely lend one another accuracy, but reinvent what we imagine accuracy to be. Ultimately, that’s how we’ll get movies of greater seriousness and visual power.

Struggling to understand the recent economic downturn? Confused about the relationship between finance and government? Looking for information you can trust on how weenies fit into the economic systems that shape our world? Who better to consult than timeworn teens?In this educational video, the participants of a teen radio forum discuss a question as important today as it was in 1948: What is Capitalism?For those whose attention span has been eroded by capitalism, I offer this shortened summary:Bobby Ray: It's not a dictatorship!Jeanie Sue: No, of course not, silly! Its Democracy.Johnny Jr.: Well, it sure ain't a system of government planning and control.Jeanie Sue: It's Democracy!Betsy Anne: Listen up everybody! Capitalism is private ownership of property. And by "property," I mean weenies.Bobby Ray: Don't forget profit motive!Johnny Jr.: Yeah! And things we want. Betsy Anne: Like WEENIES!Jeanie Sue: You're all wrong. Capitalism is really just another name for competition, competition for weenies.Bobby Ray: Golly, this is complicated. Can we just all agree that it has something to do with weenies?Announcer: Why should there be any question about it? Capitalism gives us the highest standard of living in the world. And that means ALL the weenies we can eat.I wish I could complain about the educational standards in 1948, or the propagandistic celebration of weenies so common to that era. Unfortunately, for all their biases, these teens appear to know a heck of a lot more about capitalism and weenies than my college students do 60 years later. Perhaps I should show this film in class. You know, with weenies.

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