Imagining people and the public imagination
by Jack Stilgoe
Madeleine Bunting has a very thoughtful piece in the Guardian today, drawing on our imminent Better Humans? collection. To many people, her imagination of future humans might seem far-fetched - more Gattaca than Grauniad. But this only demonstrates the poverty of debate about technologies that should force us to ask, in public, some very, very big questions.
In the US, there's a bunch of people shouting quite loudly about the radical 'benefits' of new technologies for humanity. They do this without asking, or thinking very much about, the people who stand to 'benefit.' But at least it has generated discussion. Over here, as this afternoon's Demos visitor reminded us, we do things differently, as European and UK experiments in public engagement with science demonstrate.
The Office of Science and Technology are gearing up for the second phase of their public engagement work, which will learn lessons from projects such as our own Nanodialogues, and zoom out to get a bigger view of science, technology and the public imagination. It will be interesting to see how this ties science into the big discussions that we normally associate with 'public debate.'