The Nanochannels project is a unique public experiment of democratic dialogue in action about the new industrial revolution that could change the face of medicine, energy production and water purification, electronics, materials and security. Nanotechnology, handling the building blocks of life and matter, finally gets debated and scrutinized across a range of mainstream – both online and printed – European daily newspapers, national radio and social media.
It is a real first, with students and stakeholders, such as the industry, NGOs, consumers and the general public, at the forefront. People obviously require new cutting-edge knowledge to make up their mind, and Nanochannels addresses this need through its own unique variety of social interactions, which are designed to cast its net as wide as possible. Such variety includes public round tables, live school debates, a range of expert opinion blogs, online social networking and talkback via online press microsites.
This dialogue is funded by the European Commission. It is now up to Europeans to seize their chance through the media and tackle nanotechnology’s highly ambitious prospects, its potential benefits and risks all the way to the sensitive ethical and legal implications and the most likely future repercussions on society.
Excitingly, the whole debate will be now taken up by students and professional journalists across the media, the ultimate aim being the build-up of responsible views about nanotechnology across Europe which will finally be fed into governance recommendations to the Commission.
NANOCHANNELS is a project funded by the European Commission. The views expressed on this site are entirely those of the Authors NANO Channels
and do not engage or commit the European Commission in any way. The Community is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained therein. Nanochannels is funded under the EC contract NMP4-CA-2010- 266946.
