Abstract
If one considers the Collingridge dilemma to be a dilemma awaiting a solution, one has implicitly abandoned a genuinely historical conception of the future and adopted instead a notion of the future as an object of technical design, the realisation of technical possibility or as wish-fulfilment. The definition of technology assessment (TA) as a successful response to the Collingridge dilemma renders it a technoscience that shares with all the others the conceit of being able, supposedly, to shape the future. An alternative way of pursuing TA begins with an analysis of our age of technoscience, including its impoverished conception of the future. A critical appreciation of this conception gives rise to a forensics of wishing.
Zusammenfassung
Wer das Collingridge Dilemma für ein Dilemma hält, das lösungsbedürftig ist und vielleicht sogar gelöst werden kann, hat sich bereits von einem historisch verstandenen Zukunftsbegriff verabschiedet und sieht Zukunft stattdessen als Gegenstand technischer Gestaltung, als Realisierung eines implizit schon gegebenen grenzenlosen technischen Potenzials, als Wunscherfüllung. Wenn sie vom Collingridge Dilemma ausgeht, wird die Technikfolgenabschätzung eine Technowissenschaft wie jede andere und macht sich ihren Hochmut angeblicher Zukunftsgestaltung zu eigen. Eine Alternative besteht darin, von der Analyse unseres Zeitalters der Technowissenschaften auszugehen und aus der Kritik des verarmten Zukunftsbegriffs eine Forensik des Wünschens zu entwickeln.
Résumé
Si nous considérons que le Dilemme de Collingridge est un dilemme en attente d’une solution, nous aurons, de manière implicite, abandonné une véritable conception historique de l’avenir et, à la place, adopté une notion de l’avenir en tant qu’objet de conception technique ou de réalisation de possibilité technique ou de réalisation d’un souhait. La définition de l’évaluation de la technologie en tant que réponse réussie au Dilemme de Collingridge le rend une technoscience qui partage avec tous les autres la vanité d’être capable, soi-disant, de former l’avenir. Une manière alternative de poursuivre l’évaluation de la technologie débute avec une analyse de notre ère de la technoscience, y compris sa conception appauvrie de l’avenir. Une appréciation critique de cette conception donne lieu à un débat sur le souhait.
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Notes
This claim and its associated recommendations cannot be fully substantiated in a single paper. Here, it serves mostly to stimulate discussion, and its presentation therefore retains the semi-formal format of a lecture.
Some theorists of technoscience, most notably Bruno Latour, argue that there is no difference between science and technoscience because upon close analysis, all sciences turn out to be technosciences—their work of purification never succeeds (Latour 1987, 1993). In the age of science, at any rate, it is a hallmark of science to engage in this work of purification, whereas in the age of technoscience, even much of physics and biology is abandoning it.
Many drivers conspired to render the ideal obsolete and they all belong to the age of technoscience. They include science policy-makers and many scientists themselves—preferring the likes of a Louis Pasteur to a Nils Bohr on the one hand and a Thomas Edison on the other (Stokes 1997). They also include Science and Technology Studies—against the vigorous resistance by many philosophers and some historians of science.
For all we know at this point, the technology assessment of nanomedicine serves primarily to add weight to its promises.
The worry behind this dilemma is not new. In a 1963 essay on Husserl’s philosophy of technology, Hans Blumenberg noted that in respect to the technological condition, the time when it is not yet possible to raise questions becomes fused with the time in which it is no longer possible to ask questions (Blumenberg 1963).
To be sure, as Liebert and Schmidt (2010a) point out, Collingridge himself does not suggest that the dilemma can be avoided by getting hold of the future through knowledge. He envisions a kind of ongoing control that keeps the problem from arising.
The analysis so far agrees with Liebert and Schmidt (2010a) in its analysis of the Collingridge dilemma as a problem of control. They argue, however, that Collingridge does not sufficiently appreciate the opportunities afforded under the conditions of technoscientific knowledge production. Their own proposal for avoiding the dilemma takes these conditions into consideration (Liebert and Schmidt 2010a, b). As such, their proposal appears to confirm the present analysis. However, Liebert and Schmidt rely on a distinction between the ambition to control technological development and soft, participative, reflective, and characteristically technoscientific modes of shaping it. Again, a more sustained discussion is required to explore the viability and potential significance of this distinction.
However, see Hölscher (1999) for a history of the future, including a concluding chapter that notes the abandonment of the future as a historical category in our current age.
This is leaving aside the fascinating question as to whether there are technical systems so complex that it would require a sustained, perhaps indefinite process of inquiry to determine what some machine does or does not do. Also, materials research might formulate and deliberate hypotheses about specific properties of a device. To be distinguished here are the temporal horizons for the scientific hypothesis “such and such stresses induce material fatigue (and a device of this kind will break after 15 years)” and for the technoscientific claim “the controlled growth of carbon nanotubes can be achieved with this kind of seeding on this kind of substrate”. The first of these claims requires past and future history of science to be validated, the second is validated at the moment of its realisation.
This is a strong claim, to be sure, that requires a cultural history of the present. For an extremely modest beginning, see Nordmann and Schwarz (2010).
Again, here is a distinction that demands closer attention—while everyone talks about acceptance or rejection of human enhancement technologies, there is no teleological or regulative discourse about the role of technology in the process of the Enlightenment, including intellectual and moral improvement (with the exception, perhaps, of Khushf 2007). Indeed, such a discourse would appear rather quaint in a technological milieu or the age of technoscience.
Though the following focuses on the forensics of wishing, quite literally, this is not the only approach that avoids reference to the future. Any assessment that evaluates technological alternatives can do this.
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Nordmann, A. A forensics of wishing: technology assessment in the age of technoscience. Poiesis Prax 7, 5–15 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10202-010-0081-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10202-010-0081-7