Science journalist and SXSW Interactive presenter Christie Nicholson says panelists should ask themselves two questions about their topics: “Why should people care?” and “Why should people care now?”

She hopes people will care about her panel, “U.S. Military’s Mad Science Revealed.”

In her proposal she writes, “For more than 50 years the mad scientists at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency—aka DARPA, the outrageous research arm of the Pentagon—have been launching the most disruptive technologies on earth, living up to their mantra of ‘high risk—high payoff.'”

Among DARPA’s “crazy innovations” are the personal computer, the Internet, the Berkeley Unix system and most of NASA, Nicholson says.

“DARPA has brought us so many amazing ideas,” Nicholson said.

It took some digging, but Nicholson got her hands on DARPA’s $3 billion-dollar budget, which is public information, and plans to highlight “the most amazing and most-likely-to-reach-fruition projects.” She says, “Think electromagnetic bazookas, telepathic soldiers, ape-inspired robots, memory chips in brains, shapeshifting planes and boats.”

Nicholson said her priority for this panel is to talk about DARPA projects that may be of particular interest to the SXSW crowd.

SXSW has become quite the playground for marketers, and Nicholson said she would like to see it return to its science and technology roots.

“I’m going to try to focus on projects that are going to change the way we interact with each other and with technology.”

Most of all, Nicholson said she wants her 2011 SXSW panel to be an original piece of reporting that’s investigative in nature.

“This is going to take a lot of work,” she said.

Writer John Pavlus and freelance science journalist Christopher Mims will be join Nicholson Friday, March 11, on the panel.