Magic buttons
at 9:01am
on Friday, 26th January 2007
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. The group covered organ donation ("If we know we can grow spares, how does that change how we treat our own organs"), alzheimer's ("Does he have a say in his own treatment"), health insurance ("Who can't have it, who can't afford it") and RFID tags ("If we put all our trust in security technology, we become more fragile").
At one point, the Minister looked to the future and asked where the equivalent of the iPod would be for Alzheimer's. One of the students thoughfully replied, "I hope there isn't one. One button for one problem is dangerous." A useful reminder to resist the temptation to simplify problems involving technology.
In 2007, we want as many people as possible to join in, to get intelligence on people's hopes and fears, to help build a picture of the complexity of some of these future challenges.
The conversation was really rich. I tried to get as many quote as possible. The group covered organ donation ("If we know we can grow spares, how does that change how we treat our own organs"), alzheimer's ("Does he have a say in his own treatment"), health insurance ("Who can't have it, who can't afford it") and RFID tags ("If we put all our trust in security technology, we become more fragile").
At one point, the Minister looked to the future and asked where the equivalent of the iPod would be for Alzheimer's. One of the students thoughfully replied, "I hope there isn't one. One button for one problem is dangerous." A useful reminder to resist the temptation to simplify problems involving technology.
In 2007, we want as many people as possible to join in, to get intelligence on people's hopes and fears, to help build a picture of the complexity of some of these future challenges.
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