Imagine you are on a journey across Britain. The landscape you pass through is rich in historical meaning, yet the knowledge of this history is compartmentalised: some lies in everyday experiences and memories, some lies in scholarly monographs, some is found on display (and even more, behind the scenes) in our great museums. We live in an old country - but its meaning can be disconnected and hidden. Surprisingly this situation is true even for the aspects of our lives that seem so modern, so vivid, so everyday: the communications technologies that we use to organise our lives.\n\nLocating Communications Heritage aims to reconnect the history of communications and relevant information technologies to the mobile user. What if we go on our journey again but this time a mobile application can tell us about the history of communications around us? As your train arrives in Paddington station the application pulls up an image of a telegraphic apparatus held in the Science Museum, and relates the story of a crime solved by the rapid exchange of information. Passing down the Oxford Road in Manchester would reveal that only a hundred yards west lies a room in which one of the first electronic stored-program computers operated. The application brings up an image of the object and - drawing on the best scholarship and curatorial insight - its meaning is illuminated. Object, history and place are brought together. \n\nLast but not least a channel will be opened up so that the public's experiences and memories of communications and information technologies can contribute to the ongoing reinterpretation of their histories. An aim is that the full potential of citizen mobile in the cause of history of communications will be tapped.\n\nLocating Communications Heritage will pilot a project to make this journey possible. \n\nLocating Communications Heritage is a collaborative project between an academic historian of science and techology, the curator of computing and information at the Science Museum, and commercial partners, British Telecom and Illumina Digital. It seeks the understand what needs to be accomplished to make the mobile application described above possible. The application will be designed. A pilot project will be run, revealing the potential strengths and weaknesses of the application. Finally, we intend to reflect on the experience for the benefit of academic audiences, exhibit design, object interpretation, and future application development.

We propose a Research Cluster to explore the opportunities and challenges of the Digital Economy. The Internet is driving many powerful convergences in media, devices and infrastructure provision. These convergences hold the promise that the next-generation Internet could be a very powerful and universal platform where a great deal of economic and social activity could take place. Given the universal nature of the Internet this platform would break down the traditional distinctions between, say business and the general public, and anyone from any sector could be a provider or a user of these services.If properly realised the benefits from these developments could be considerable. However, they will not happen automatically, there are many issues that need to be tackled before they can be fully achieved. Given the nature of the Internet these issues are as much economic, social, legal and regulatory as they are technical and, critically, these issues have been tackled together to provide an holistic and complete solution.We have assembled a multi-disciplinary consortium that includes talented and experienced research workers in all the fields necessary to address these issues and have established relationships with major stakeholders in the next-generation Internet. The Cluster is led by Imperial College, the University of Oxford and the University of Southampton. The Research Cluster would conduct an open investigation to identify the topics that need to be addressed and produce a roadmap or research and development agenda to tackle them. The Cluster proposes to hold two open workshops at the beginning and end of the one year study to involve the community as much as possible and to create expert Working Groups to address the critical issues. All these deliberations will be conducted in an open manner using Web 2.0 community networking techniques.The outputs of these deliberations will a programme of linked actions to drive forward the development of the Digital Economy. These will comprise multi-disciplinary research programmes, commercial exploitations, social or legal actions or regulatory recommendations. The Reserch Cluster will also be used to identify the coalitions, again both research and commercial, best suited to take forward these proposals.

How would you like to have your house cleaned automatically by a robot? Would you trust a robot babysitter? Do you think you would fancy a robot partner? How far do you think present-day robotics technology has actually advanced - can you tell the difference between science fact and science fiction? If a fully-functional, thinking robot could be developed, would you consider it human?How many of us have really considered the technical challenges and ethical issues of robotics research? Robot Thought? - Thinking about Robots is an event designed to enable family audiences to consider and convey their opinions on issues relating to science and engineering. The event uses the format of short dramatic vignettes to highlight important practical, personal and social issues relating to robotics. During each vignette a particular concept or issue is presented to the audience, who are then encouraged to express their opinions and concerns about the issues, and debate the implications of robotics on future society.The event format has already been trialled in Bristol, to great acclaim. This project will involve taking the highly popular and thought provoking performances to family audiences across the country. Eight science communication venues and four robotics research laboratories have signed on as partners to enhance the delivery and dissemination of this exciting event format over the course of the two-year project.