What happened
sciencehorizons events took place all over the UK from January to June 2007. In all the events people explored some of the ways that our minds and bodies, our homes and communities, our work and leisure time, and people and our planet could be affected by new science and technology in the future. People talked about the future and about their hopes and concerns about the way science and technology could affect our lives.
All the events used the sciencehorizons discussion pack to help start a group conversation and collect people's views. The pack contains stories about what life might be like in 2025. These are not predictions, just possible futures, based on currently emerging science and technology.
The pack also contained a step-by-step guide to using the pack, and response forms to help people summarise a group’s discussions and send us their feedback.
The pack was used in various events:
- Small group discussions.
Events where a small group of people, who usually knew each already, such as a group of friends or family, school students, a parish council, a health interest group or a women's institute, met and used the sciencehorizons pack to discuss amongst themselves. - Facilitated public events.
Public events held in science centres or other community spaces, run by a facilitator and usually involving one or more invited experts as well as members of the public, discussing the sciencehorizons stories and questions together. - A ‘deliberative panel’.
31 specially selected members of the public were invited to join the deliberative panel in Bristol. They spent a whole day discussing the stories in the sciencehorizons pack together. They then requested some experts to come and talk to them about the key issues that had been raised. A month later four experts met with the panel and discussed climate change, robotics, genetic testing and cyber security in more depth.