challenges. Nonetheless, Blair was appealing to a commonsensical view of scientific research 246 Science and the politics of openness for the greater good recurrently invoked in public discourse – most recently, by journalists urging an extension of the fourteen-day limit on embryo research to ensure benefits from medical science (e.g. Harris, 2016). In this equation of science and the public interest, the public are represented primarily as beneficiaries. Yet, in principle, Blair’s intervention opened up the possibility of renegotiating how the public interest in
strategies aimed at containment of technology from positions in culture outside technology (for example, restrictions on embryo research), yet he is equally clear that the primary beneficial consequence of democratisation will consist in checking certain kinds of technology design from within. This might seem to betray an ongoing concern with technology as a threat, reflecting Feenberg’s belief that current technology is a reified version, shaped by capitalist interests. Defining technology as a social process, he envisages democracy as a restraining force within