I have a feeling that 'engagement' owes some of its popularity to its vagueness. For example, there seems to be one sense in which what we're talking about is essentially a bait, some thing or some process that will capture the imagination of what we might as well call 'consumers' or 'recipients', pierce their indifference and, with luck draw them into science or technology or at least a low-earth orbit around them. In this sense of 'engagement', there may be no hint of any kind of accommodation on the part of science or technology to any publics. This is more or less compatible with unreconstructed public understanding.
But at the other end of one spectrum, there's also the sense that's popular in commentary about science and technology from a wide range of parties - including policy makers and economists. I'm thinking, for example, of that 1994 book 'The New Production of Knowledge', which coined the phrase 'mode 2' for a new kind of knowledge production said to be socially distributed - a kind of knowledge production in which there is a new need for scientists and technologists to satisfy quality controls emanating from the public in addition to those from their ivory-tower-dwelling peers.
I do agree with Mike that the technology has been far too often overlooked. Perhaps worse is the occasional tactic of saying by way of introduction that by 'science' you mean science and technology and then never using the T word again. This has been worse, I think, among academics. So I'm very much a fan of the T.
Chris
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