Demos: A Network for Ideas and Action

Incorporated in 1994, Demos is a nonpartisan, nonprofit British think tank based in London that focuses on issues such as citizen engagement with scientific and social policy. The organization has taken a significant role in framing, facilitating, and commenting upon public dialogue about the social and ethical implications of nanotechnology. Demos's mandate is to work in partnership with policy makers, civic groups, corporations, governments, nongovernmental organizations, and social entrepreneurs, not just in the United Kingdom but also on an international scale.

A benchmark report issued in 2004 by Britain's Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering, titled Nanoscience and Nanotechnologies: Opportunities and Uncertainties, stated that the novel nature of nanotechnology research demands more public deliberation about the means and ends of technoscientific innovation. In response to the report, the British government established several multidisciplinary groups predicated on exploring new ways to encourage public engagement with nanotechnology. Demos researchers have observed and commented upon those initiatives, and conducted their own experiments in what the organization calls “upstream public engagement.” A continuing theme in Demos's research areas is the relationship between science, technology, and democracy; what particularly interests Demos is that way that upstream engagement seeks not only to change how scientists and policy makers relate to the public but also to encourage deeper and more critical thinking about the foundations upon which the technoscientific enterprise rests.

To that end, Demos has published several reports on its own public engagement initiatives regarding nanotechnology, including See-Through Science: Why Public Engagement Needs to Move Upstream, by James Wilsdon and Rebecca Wills, Governing at the Nanoscale: People, Policies and Emerging Technologies, by Matthew Kearnes, Phil Macnaghten, and James Wilsdon, and Nanodia-logues: Experiments in Public Engagement With Science, by Jack Stilgoe. The reports are cautious but hopeful about a future where citizens can knowledgeably and responsibly scrutinize the proposed means and ends of technoscientific advance, while scientists, technical experts, and those in positions of governance can learn to incorporate new ways to value diverse forms of knowledge, common sense, and wisdom.