The slideshow at the bottom of this post may be the single best Powerpoint presentation I’ve ever seen. And it’s on something I care deeply about: the space program. You can look at it now and then come back up here, or read through and then watch it, but please: Watch it.

For those of my generation (either late Baby Boom or early Gen X, depending upon whom you read; let’s just say I’m a fan of both Nirvana and Carl Reiner), the space program was an important part of our lives, something that holds deep meaning and provided enormous benefit to humankind. I remember as a boy in kindergarten being led down to the auditorium to watch the first moonwalk on either of two tiny TV sets hung in the corners of the room. Now, thanks to technology developed to support space exploration, kids would be watching that broadcast on a jumbo screen or, ironically, on a tiny screen held in their hand. The space program gave us LED, LCD, transistor technology, X-ray machines, teflon, smoke detectors, microwave ovens, cellphones, and a lot more. Those of us who were around as these things came online remember life before them. And even if we don’t think about that, we might think about the admonishment of “Star Trek” to “boldly go where no man has gone before.”

The people who came after us, Gen Y, born between 1977 and 2000, care about none of this. These devices already exist. And how did they come to be? They think they were invented by cool startup companies (rather than, believe it or not, a government program responsible for the greatest cycle of invention in history). (And, on a side note, I stopped talking about Kirk and Spock years ago because my students don’t know which is which.)

Evidence of this ignorance and what results from it is everywhere. Who runs for Congress on a platform of support for NASA? Precisely one person recently — a friend of mine in Pasadena — and he lost. What is the level of public support for NASA? About zilch. Even while as a nation we’re concerned that we’re losing our high-tech edge to Asian nations (which we are), and we’re upset about a sagging economy without enough good-paying clean jobs — situations that space exploration would help solve. As I wrote about here, under item #5, I recently got to speak with a couple dozen NASA people in one afternoon. When I shared my enthusiasm for the space program, every one of them treated me like a rarely seen relative from Brigadoon and bemoaned the lack of awareness and respect for space science.

So: Here’s what I love about the presentation below. In 90 slides so simple, direct, and evocative that even one of these easily confused and distracted Gen Y’ers could follow it, four of their own generation lay out for NASA how the new storytelling had better work if space exploration is going to gain new investors. Here are the key takeaways (and take note, because to me they seem useful across the board in dealing with 8-to-31-year-olds):

1. The traditional communications hierarchy is dead. Given the new technological platforms — blogs, YouTube, IM’s, Twitter, etc. etc. — no one awaits Zeus’s thunderbolts. Everyone is part of the static. Either you allow a conversation, or no one is going to listen. This may seem annoying — and on many levels, it is — but it’s factual. In the age of three broadcast networks, some people even watched the Indian test pattern after hours. With all the choices and all the types of choices, no one needs to do that any more.
2. Gen Y is impatient. Even more impatient than I usually am. Even more impatient than you think you are. If they’re reading this post, they’ve probably already stopped because it seems too long.
3. “39% believe that nothing worthwhile has come out of NASA.” Lest you get pissed at Gen Y for this, it’s more appropriate to blame the messenger who delivered no message. And given that the mainstream media is lazy and prone to parrot whatever news it gets, blame clearly lies with a government program that hasn’t put out a good story about itself and is utterly clueless how to do so.

This last point is what cheers me about this presentation, drafted by four of these darn kids working on their own time. They’ve identified the communications problem, they offer advice, and the very nature of their presentation shows the style and impact of doing it right.

Now NASA ought to hire them to do it. Because whatever else NASA has them doing (evidently, they’re young NASA employees), this is more important right now.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 15th, 2008 at 10:40 pm and is filed under On reading, Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.