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'?
"science"
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- Nano Nano Lord Sainsbury announced yesterday his new grants for public engagement with science, one of which is funding a new Demos project with Lancaster University. After See-Through Science, we are squaring up to our own challenge and doing some innovative public engagement experiments with a handful of organisations who have different approaches to 'science' and 'the public'. For more info on this project, which we call Nano-Dialogues, email me.Last night, I was part of another form of... from : jackstilgoe 18th March 2005
- Sing us a song, you're the nanoman Running really low on nano puns. No bad thing.Just got back back from the annual Nanotechnology schmoozathon in Los Angeles. For most of the four days, I was more ethnographer than contributor. But there was a thoughtful session on "nanotechnology and society". I talked about See-through Science and our Nanodialogues project. Others, including Julia Moore and Don Reed, discussed the lessons from the GM saga. There was also talk of risk research and standards-setting. The odd thing was that,... from : jackstilgoe 13th May 2005
- It's not rocket science Yesterday took me to Nottingham for a debate on nanotechnology-"Radical science or plus se change?". Turns out, it's somewhere in between. The event was a showdown between the quiet voices of British reason (represented by Richard Jones and Saul Tendler) and the simulated braggadocio of the American molecular manufacturing movement. Drawing on the dreams of Drexler (of "Gray goo" and desktop nanofactory fame), the Americans presented some animations showing the tiny insides of atom assemblers.... from : jackstilgoe 25th August 2005
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Research Fortnight go two more rounds with Demos
‘Time to disengage’
Research Fortnight, Editorial, 14 September 2005
There is a slightly Soviet feel about last week’s pamphlet from the Demos think-tank, its latest attempt to push ‘engagement’ further and faster.
from : jameswilsdon 6th October 2005 - Scientists at Large A long awaited survey from the Royal Society. It reveals the barriers that scientists feel stop them from getting out of their labs, into the open, talking and listening to members of the public. The major barrier, it seems, is the simple day-to-day pressure of professional research. We identified a similar thing last year in The Public Value of Science, and linked it to debates about public engagement as they fit into the culture of science. My worry in all of this is that the survey was... from : jackstilgoe 12th July 2006
- Harare 1 - Snakes in a Well 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.. from : jackstilgoe 24th July 2006
- 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... from : jackstilgoe 3rd January 2007
- 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.... from : jackstilgoe 4th 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... from : jackstilgoe 16th January 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... from : jackstilgoe 28th March 2007
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