The Nanodialogues
Four experiments in upstream public engagement
Nanotechnology - the science of small things - promises to be one of the defining technologies of the 21st Century. But what will it mean for society and the environment? And how can public engagement in deciding the direction of research be moved 'upstream'?
Harare 1 - Snakes in a Well
at 9:57am on Monday, 24th July 2006
The third nanodialogue has just wrapped up. In Harare, we've spent the last two weeks with mushroom-farmers, brick-makers and water scientists, imagining the role that nanotechnology might play in their lives. 
The gulf between Western technoscience and applications for poor communities is far wider than I'd imagined. Ask people from Epworth - a Harare suburb currently recovering from Mugabe's Operation Murambatsvina - what they want from new technologies and they talk about the rope and washer pump, which would stop things (like snakes) falling into their wells. They would also like ways of coping with the fact that, because they are far enough outside the city to get no water but not far enough to have any space, they are forced to dig their wells next door to their pit latrines.
If the promise that others have for nano water applications is going to have any impact where it matters, scientists and funders have to start looking at these local contexts. They could start here, with the pamphlet that we launched last month.
UPDATE: A Zimbabwean journalist has picked up on the experiment and done a piece for SciDev.
The gulf between Western technoscience and applications for poor communities is far wider than I'd imagined. Ask people from Epworth - a Harare suburb currently recovering from Mugabe's Operation Murambatsvina - what they want from new technologies and they talk about the rope and washer pump, which would stop things (like snakes) falling into their wells. They would also like ways of coping with the fact that, because they are far enough outside the city to get no water but not far enough to have any space, they are forced to dig their wells next door to their pit latrines.
If the promise that others have for nano water applications is going to have any impact where it matters, scientists and funders have to start looking at these local contexts. They could start here, with the pamphlet that we launched last month.
UPDATE: A Zimbabwean journalist has picked up on the experiment and done a piece for SciDev.
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