Jack Stilgoe
Senior Researcher
Jack Stilgoe works on science and technology projects and specialises in issues of science, society and public engagement.
- A Demos experiment in crowd-storming and twilight barking We spend a lot of time thinking about how our work practises can better reflect our values - of openness, participation and all that jazz. We've decided to let the hive help shape a major new piece of Demos thinking. So we're open-sourcing our proposal-writing process. Now you can help us map the political battleground of the next 10 years. Sign up to our wiki - it only takes 10 seconds - and get involved. Following a thick discussion in the Demos Blue Space, a team of us have put... continue reading on 1st April 2007
- The science we need, the science we want The Council for Science and Technology - Government's highest-level science advisory group - have this morning published their review of progress on nano policy. Broadly the message is... good work on the public engagement and standard setting but two thumbs down for funding far too few nanotoxicity studies. As is so often the case with science policy's unclear lines of responsibility, the buck has been passed along. The Science Minister was on the Today programme arguing that the money was... continue reading on 28th March 2007 in The Nanodialogues
- Inconvenient uncertainties Finally caught the Channel 4 climate change debunking last night. Smelt bad from the start and the stink only got worse. But a fascinating deconstruction (someone French once called this "blowing up in slow motion"). It showed that the current winners ("swindlers") of the climate change debate have a fragile position. The evidence is massively in their favour, but they're just not as good at talking about uncertainty as their Exxon-funded chums, who argue through polished... continue reading on 13th March 2007 Comments (4)
- Another normal disaster I'm fascinated that we apparently already know what caused the derailment in Cumbria. Some bars separating the point blades broke and the inspection to check they were OK didn't happen. Job done. Blaim laid. Except that accidents are always, always more complicated and more interesting than that. I've just been having another look at Normal Accidents by Charles Perrow, emeritus Yale Sociology professor. It's a wonderful book, written in 1984, post-Three Mile Island but pre-Chernobyl and... continue reading on 26th February 2007
- The Whoville Economic Forum Davos has just finished. Following the stories earlier in the week about climate change sticking plasters, the head of Swiss Re was quoted as telling the forum that "technology provides the solutions." I've just been reading a nice piece by Malcolm Gladwell, in which he points out the difference between puzzles, with answers waiting for missing bits of information, and mysteries, where there's no shortage of information, but it's not clear where the answer or the question lies. The... continue reading on 30th January 2007 Comments (2)
- Magic buttons Coverage today from the Guardian and the B B C of yesterday's launch of the Sciencehorizons project. 8 floors up at the Royal College of Art, overlooking the Albert Hall (officially the Albert Hall of Arts and Sciences), we had Science Minister Malcolm Wicks and a group of 12 RCA students using our discussion packs for the first time. The conversation was really rich. I tried to get as many quote as possible. They covered organ donation ("If we know we can grow spares, how does that... continue reading on 26th January 2007
- A new soft machine As we gear up to tomorrow's Atlas of Ideas launch, focussing on science in China, India and Korea, I've been thinking about some new bits of world-class British science. I spent last week in a Nano-sand-pit, working with 20 of the countries leading nano-scientists on new ways of turning information into stuff (towards a sort of mini 3D printer). The Ideas Factory blog, which over the course of the week climbed into Wordpress's top-ten, attracting over 100 comments, has just announced one of... continue reading on 16th January 2007 in The Nanodialogues
- Where forwards please? The new ad from Honda stars a cross between Mr Soft and a stormtrooper with sciatica. The robot struts (limps) his stuff among his dusty predecessors in a museum, and that chap from Lake Wobegon tells us that Honda are about "Onwards, upwards - anyway but backwards. Tapping progress on the shoulder and saying 'More forwards please'."It's a nice turn of phrase, but it rings my alarm bells. It reminds us how easy it is to fall into the trap of seeing science-in-society in a linear way.... continue reading on 4th January 2007 in The Nanodialogues
- Way upstream Next week, I will be a mentor at the EPSRC's 'Ideas Factory' on Software Control of Matter. This takes me way upstream and puts me among a diverse group of scientists, who are coming together to consider how to approach an esoteric problem with potentially massive implications - building stuff nano-bit by nano-bit. The EPSRC, who distribute the engineering and physics part of the UK's science budget, have set aside money to fund the proposals that are produced. For the last year, we at... continue reading on 3rd January 2007 in The Nanodialogues Comments (2)
- Talking tomorrow's world A few stories this morning about the Government's Horizon Scanning Centre. An interesting stab at Tomorrow's-Worlding by the Office of Science and Innovation, made more so by their appreciation of the limits of such exercises. In 2007, OSI have asked us, via the Sciencehorizons project, to generate real public engagment with these futures and the future. This paper puts the project in context. It explains the limits of prediction and the value of broader debate conversational futures. We... continue reading on 20th December 2006