David Dickson, founder of the new site SciDev.Net (also logged today), writes in the December 6 _Nature_ about the use of the web to engage the public in issues of science and technology. Brief and to the point. Worth reading. (Free registration required.) Excerpts:

We all stand to benefit from the exploration of ways to use the power of the Internet to disseminate reliable scientific and technical information. ... There is a particular opportunity here to use the Internet to meet the social and economic needs of developing countries. ... [SciDev.Net will] seek to exploit new opportunities opened up by the web. ... A key challenge to initiatives such as SciDev.Net is how to democratize the gathering and dissemination of information about science in a way that retains the legitimating devices of conventional editorial processes.

Weaving a Social Web