Welcome to the 2020 Science Archive
2020 Science started life in 2007 as a nanotechnology blog written by Andrew Maynard on SafeNano. In the following years it developed into a personal blog addressing emerging technologies, responsible innovation, risk, science communication, and the intersection between science and society more generally.
Andrew made he decision to wind the blog down in 2019 as his focus and writing developed in new directions. This archive contains most of the original posts (there have been occasional clean-ups of content). For more recent articles etc. please visit andrewmaynard.net. And thanks for visiting!
BROWSE THE ARCHIVE
Davos 2010 – Got the mittens, where’s the snow?
I'm sitting here at Dulles Airport waiting for my flight to Zurich and the annual World Economic Forum Meeting in Davos, so I thought I'd dash off a quick blog. If you're on the ball, you will realize that by arriving tomorrow, I will be missing most of the first day...
From Davos with love
This week I'm heading out to the World Economic Forum jamboree in Davos, Switzerland. I'd like to play this cool - as if rubbing shoulders with politicians, business leaders and celebs is something I do all the time. But the reality is that this is my first time to...
No Small Matter – a taste of the nanoscale
To accompany the review just posted of Felice Frankel and George Whitesides' book "No Small Matter: Science on the Nanoscale" the authors kindly allowed me to post this series of excerpts. What I wanted to capture here was the synergy between the images and the prose...
No Small Matter – A connoisseur’s guide to delicate work
How do you write a book about something few people have heard off, and less seem interested in? The answer, it seems, is to write about something else. Felice Frankel and George Whitesides have clearly taken this lesson to heart. Judged by the cover alone, their new...
Daily Mail Science Reporting – Deconstructed
Hype, scare mongering, obfuscation and just plain misinformation - the scientific community are reasonably clear about what they think of Tabloid science reporting much of the time. So I wasn't too surprised to see the headline "'Grey goo' food laced with...
UK House of Lords scrutinizes nanotechnology and food
Back in February of 2009, the UK House of Lords Science and Technology Committee launched an inquiry into the use of nanotechnology in food products and the food industry. Chaired by Lord Krebs (the son of Hans Adolf Krebs - best known for describing the mechanisms...
Scientists and social media – This is not a case study
By Ruth Seeley, No Spin PR. A little over a year ago, Ruth Seeley – a freelance communications consultant – rather bravely approached me with a proposition: She would help me develop a social media strategy for 2020 Science, if I would let her write the experience up...
Ten emerging technology trends to watch over the next decade
Ten years ago at the close of the 20th century, people the world over were obsessing about the millennium bug - an unanticipated glitch arising from an earlier technology. I wonder how clear it was then that, despite this storm in what turned out to be a rather...
Scientist just wants to have fun – a compendium of mindless games for the holiday season!
Brain-candy for the intellectually incapacitated. To help the brain cells recuperate from over-exertion (and quite possibly over-indulgence) this Holiday season, here's a short compendium of mindless games - the sort of things scientists and others indulge in when...
21st Century Tech Governance? What would Ned Ludd do?
By Jim Thomas, ETC Group A guest blog in the Alternative Perspectives on Technology Innovation series For a fresh perspective on how to do technology governance consider starting somewhere else. I suggest York Castle in Northern England - a stark stone tower from the...