What lies ahead for science and science writing?
The MIT Graduate Program in Science Writing turns 10 this year, and this Saturday saw many of the program’s 61 alumni back on campus to catch up and reminisce with fellow graduates, professors and mentors.A daylong symposium, titled “Telling the Stories of Science,” was a celebration of the past 10 years of science writing at MIT, but the day’s ending events focused on the future — the future of science, and the future of science writing. One panel explored the current state of play in the study of brains, learning and memory; a second explored the 50-year future of three of the most significant current stories in science: molecular biology, nanotechnology and quantum computing.The future of scienceMIT professors Phillip Sharp, Angela Belcher and Seth Lloyd each took a turn predicting what the future holds for their respective fields — first looking at how far they’ve come today.When Belcher first asked,...