Universities Launch “Futurity” to Bring Science to the Web

A lit­tle break­ing news… 35 lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties have launched a new web site, Futurity.org, with a sim­ple goal — edu­cat­ing the pub­lic about new sci­en­tif­ic break­throughs. In the old days, uni­ver­si­ties depend­ed on the tra­di­tion­al press to spread the word about new sci­en­tif­ic advances. Now, with jour­nal­ism in cri­sis and news­pa­pers fold­ing, the schools can no longer bank on that. And so we get Futu­ri­ty, which is essen­tial­ly a non­prof­it wire ser­vice that will dis­trib­ute news through major news sup­pli­ers on the web (Yahoo News & Google News) and also through social media chan­nels (Twit­ter, Face­book and MySpace). On the list of par­tic­i­pat­ing uni­ver­si­ties, you will find UC Berke­ley, Stan­ford, Johns Hop­kins, Carnegie Mel­lon, The Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go, Duke, Prince­ton, Yale and many oth­ers. You can get a full list here, and read more about the ven­ture here.

Thanks Denise for the tip on this one. Have some­thing you want to share with your fel­low read­ers? Send your tips to mail@openculture.com