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Back to the future
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LOCATIONS UK 110 High Holborn, London, WC1V 6EU Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1200 AUSTRALIA Level 11, Suite 3, 100 Walker Street, North Sydney, NSW 2060 Tel +61 2 9422 8559 USA 45 Prospect St, Cambridge, MA 02139 Tel +1 781 734 8773
SUBSCRIPTION SERVICE For our latest subscription offers, visit newscientist.com/subscribe Customer and subscription services are also available by: Telephone +44 (0) 330 333 9470 Email [email protected] Web newscientist.com/subscribe Post New Scientist, Rockwood House, Perrymount Road, Haywards Heath, West Sussex RH16 3DH One year subscription (51 issues) UK £150 CONTACTS Contact us newscientist.com/contact Who’s who newscientist.com/people General & media enquiries Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 [email protected] Editorial Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Picture desk Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1268 Display Advertising Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1291 [email protected] Recruitment Advertising UK Tel +44 (0) 20 8652 4444 [email protected] UK Newsstand Tel +44 (0) 20 3787 9001 Newstrade distributed by Marketforce UK Ltd, 2nd Floor, 5 Churchill Place, Canary Wharf, London E14 5HU Syndication Tribune Content Agency Tel +44 (0) 20 7588 7588 [email protected] New Scientist Live Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1273 [email protected]
© 2017 New Scientist Ltd, England New Scientist is published weekly by New Scientist Ltd. ISSN 0262 4079. New Scientist (Online) ISSN 2059 5387 Registered at the Post Office as a newspaper and printed in England by Williams Gibbons (Wolverhampton)
Back to the future Tech matters in the UK election, but new ideas are in short supply “THE Britain that is going to be forged in the white heat of this revolution will be no place for restrictive practices or for outdated measures.” So said Harold Wilson in 1963, urging Britons to embrace science and technology to ensure “the future greatness of our country”; his message helped the Labour party win the 1964 general election. Half a century on, and the country once again needs reassuring of its potential for greatness. And most of the parties vying to form the next government accept that embracing science and technology could once again be key to that greatness as they consider the shape of the post-Brexit economy.
A pity, then, that the rival party leaders haven’t expressed that half as powerfully as Wilson did. Instead, they have made mostly uninspired pledges along party lines. The Conservatives, for example, say they will make the country into “the world’s most dynamic digital economy” with investment in infrastructure, skills and start-ups. Labour says it will look into the potential for “new jobs and new forms of work – but also new risks of inequality and job insecurity”. Both have pledged to uphold incoming laws on data protection and increase R&D spending. Neither expresses the passion one might hope for, given the promise and challenges of technology (see page 20).
Domestic science WHEN did you last conduct a complex chemical experiment? For most of us, the answer is probably whenever you last spent any time in a kitchen. Cookery boils down to applied organic chemistry, with a sprinkling of combustion physics and a dollop of materials science thrown in (see page 32). But the feats of chemical engineering that cooks perform every mealtime –
whether in a billycan over a fire, or a sous vide in a fancy restaurant – are more often appreciated with the senses rather than the mind. That’s been changing since the advent of molecular gastronomy, which has brought cultural cachet to the kinds of work industrial food scientists do all the time – albeit that many foodies would still rather their food came au naturel than highly engineered.
Except when it comes to amassing power, that is. “Some people say that it is not for government to regulate when it comes to technology and the internet. We disagree,” says the Tory manifesto. “Our starting point is that online rules should reflect those that govern our lives offline.” Fair enough, but the reflection so far has been so simple-minded as to be at best counterproductive, and at worst suspect, introducing prudish censorship and mass surveillance. Action might well be needed to curb the excesses of social media and tech giants, but restrictive practices and outdated measures have no place in forging Britain’s future greatness. n
The next big thing in dining is set to be cross-sensory dining: altering diners’ perceptions of how food smells and tastes by changing factors like its colour, the lighting and the tableware. You could think of it as putting the art of food presentation, long practised by restauranteurs, on a more neuroscientific basis, much as molecular gastronomy riffs off the chemical basis of cooking. If it catches on, we may soon learn that a feast for the senses is really a feast for the mind too. n 27 May 2017 | NewScientist | 3
PHONLAMAI PHOTO/SHUTTERSTOCK
LOCATIONS UK 110 High Holborn, London, WC1V 6EU Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1200 AUSTRALIA Level 11, Suite 3, 100 Walker Street, North Sydney, NSW 2060 Tel +61 2 9422 8559 USA 45 Prospect St, Cambridge, MA 02139 Tel +1 781 734 8773
SUBSCRIPTION SERVICE For our latest subscription offers, visit newscientist.com/subscribe Customer and subscription services are also available by: Telephone +44 (0) 330 333 9470 Email [email protected] Web newscientist.com/subscribe Post New Scientist, Rockwood House, Perrymount Road, Haywards Heath, West Sussex RH16 3DH One year subscription (51 issues) UK £150 CONTACTS Contact us newscientist.com/contact Who’s who newscientist.com/people General & media enquiries Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 [email protected] Editorial Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Picture desk Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1268 Display Advertising Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1291 [email protected] Recruitment Advertising UK Tel +44 (0) 20 8652 4444 [email protected] UK Newsstand Tel +44 (0) 20 3787 9001 Newstrade distributed by Marketforce UK Ltd, 2nd Floor, 5 Churchill Place, Canary Wharf, London E14 5HU Syndication Tribune Content Agency Tel +44 (0) 20 7588 7588 [email protected] New Scientist Live Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1273 [email protected]
© 2017 New Scientist Ltd, England New Scientist is published weekly by New Scientist Ltd. ISSN 0262 4079. New Scientist (Online) ISSN 2059 5387 Registered at the Post Office as a newspaper and printed in England by Williams Gibbons (Wolverhampton)
Back to the future Tech matters in the UK election, but new ideas are in short supply “THE Britain that is going to be forged in the white heat of this revolution will be no place for restrictive practices or for outdated measures.” So said Harold Wilson in 1963, urging Britons to embrace science and technology to ensure “the future greatness of our country”; his message helped the Labour party win the 1964 general election. Half a century on, and the country once again needs reassuring of its potential for greatness. And most of the parties vying to form the next government accept that embracing science and technology could once again be key to that greatness as they consider the shape of the post-Brexit economy.
A pity, then, that the rival party leaders haven’t expressed that half as powerfully as Wilson did. Instead, they have made mostly uninspired pledges along party lines. The Conservatives, for example, say they will make the country into “the world’s most dynamic digital economy” with investment in infrastructure, skills and start-ups. Labour says it will look into the potential for “new jobs and new forms of work – but also new risks of inequality and job insecurity”. Both have pledged to uphold incoming laws on data protection and increase R&D spending. Neither expresses the passion one might hope for, given the promise and challenges of technology (see page 20).
Domestic science WHEN did you last conduct a complex chemical experiment? For most of us, the answer is probably whenever you last spent any time in a kitchen. Cookery boils down to applied organic chemistry, with a sprinkling of combustion physics and a dollop of materials science thrown in (see page 32). But the feats of chemical engineering that cooks perform every mealtime –
whether in a billycan over a fire, or a sous vide in a fancy restaurant – are more often appreciated with the senses rather than the mind. That’s been changing since the advent of molecular gastronomy, which has brought cultural cachet to the kinds of work industrial food scientists do all the time – albeit that many foodies would still rather their food came au naturel than highly engineered.
Except when it comes to amassing power, that is. “Some people say that it is not for government to regulate when it comes to technology and the internet. We disagree,” says the Tory manifesto. “Our starting point is that online rules should reflect those that govern our lives offline.” Fair enough, but the reflection so far has been so simple-minded as to be at best counterproductive, and at worst suspect, introducing prudish censorship and mass surveillance. Action might well be needed to curb the excesses of social media and tech giants, but restrictive practices and outdated measures have no place in forging Britain’s future greatness. n
The next big thing in dining is set to be cross-sensory dining: altering diners’ perceptions of how food smells and tastes by changing factors like its colour, the lighting and the tableware. You could think of it as putting the art of food presentation, long practised by restauranteurs, on a more neuroscientific basis, much as molecular gastronomy riffs off the chemical basis of cooking. If it catches on, we may soon learn that a feast for the senses is really a feast for the mind too. n 27 May 2017 | NewScientist | 3