Before and after science: Science and technology in pop music, 1970-1990

Abstract

Media contexts other than news - including fiction - are frequently neglected by scholars in the field of science communication. This chapter uses the example of pop music to describe how the rich articulation of popular culture with regard to science and technology can interact in non-linear, unpredictable ways with specialist knowledge. Pop music can thus yield significant understanding of the public images and visions of science. Examples can be provided of how the uses and appropriation of science and the social meanings of science and technology in this context - from the 'de-evolutionary' theory underlying Devo's pop songs to Kraftwerk's 'man-machine' ideology - have often preceded more explicit concerns about the implications of science and technology that later became visible in other contexts, such as the news media. © 2008 Springer Netherlands.