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Futures Assessed: How Technology Assessment, Ethics and Think Tanks Make Sense of an Unknown Future

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Governing Future Technologies

Part of the book series: Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook ((SOSC,volume 27))

Abstract

“Zeitdiagnoses” such as reflexive modernization (Beck et al. 1994) call attention to the fact that our societies monitor their technological future in an ambivalent way: They keep one eye on benefits or innovations, and on risks or dangers the other. But it might be worthwhile taking a closer look at this ambivalence, for it also sets the ground for a division of labour. Despite of the fuzzy and intricate nature of the boundaries that separate those social domains in which the bright side of emerging technologies is up for speculation, from those in which the unintended consequences are subjected to deliberation, the two different social realms can be distinguished along the lines of the societal demands they address.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The concept of a discourse consisting of articulations that do not only utter “bricks”, but also use bricks to produce a meaningful structure shows many resemblances to concepts employed in Actor Network Theory, particularily to the notion of “association” (cf. Latour 2005).

  2. 2.

    We refer to Aristotle’s famous example in De Interpretatione 9.

  3. 3.

    For Switzerland, cf. Baumgartner et al. 2003; for Germany, cf. Paschen et al. 2003; for Austria, cf. ITA 2006.

  4. 4.

    Interestingly, for uncertainties that underwent no specification, no institution was mentioned to deal with them. Thus, instead of assigning an institution the investigation of the possibility of a “grey goo”, this scenario has been excluded as a mere “distraction from more pressing concerns”.

  5. 5.

    For the specification of a paradigm in terms of a “disciplinary matrix”, see the postscript to the second edition of Kuhn 1970.

  6. 6.

    Since we are not interested in doing ethics, but rather in observing it, the many reasons for or against the distinction between what belongs to the domain of morality and what belongs to the domain of ethics plays a minor role here.

  7. 7.

    Ebbesen, Mette, Svend Andersen, and Flemming Besenbacher. 2006. “Ethics in Nanotechnology: Starting from Scratch?” Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 26:451–462.

  8. 8.

    Berne, R. W. 2004. “Tiny ethics for big challenges: calling for an ethics of nanoscale science and technology.” Circuits and Devices Magazine, IEEE 20:10.

  9. 9.

    Such symmetry of communication, specific to science, was already noted by Merton 1973 [1942].

  10. 10.

    Besides this essential function, citations serve a wide range of other functions, as highlighted in the field of citation analysis. For the theoretical significance of such analyses in the context of STS, see Leydesdorff 1998.

  11. 11.

    Ebbessen et al. refer to the 5th edition of Beauchamp, T. L., and J. F. Childress. 2001. Principles of biomedical ethics. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. The principles are: respect for autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice.

  12. 12.

    This dependency has remained undetected within the field. Even defenders of principalism have asked themselves what the difference is: “Fundamentals of bioethics or fundamentalism in ethics?” (Quante 2000). At the same time the dispute between “A critique of principlism” (Clouser and Gert 1990) and “Against Relativism” (Macklin 1999) is connected to the irritating question of whether applied ethics allows for a theory of morality or not.

  13. 13.

    Interestingly, Bern strongly refutes such determinism: “In fact, disagreements over which future technologies are myth and which are realistic […] begin with the assumption that technology is a willful, evolving reality rather than a directed, socially constructed one. It assumes that technology evolves separately from human imagination, ambitions, and dreams when in fact technology is by its nature a social construction” (Berne 2004: 12). Although such a deterministic attitude is negated on a theoretical level, on a practical level, however, Bern has nothing to propose by way of a different way of thinking.

  14. 14.

    This finding however does not mean that ethicists do not seek to influence the ongoing debate about possible consequences of nanotechnology – on the contrary.

  15. 15.

    An overview as well as an evaluation of pTA projects in different European countries is provided by Joss and Bellucci 2002. For the US context, see Guston 1999. An anthology which discusses such a “democratization of expertise” critically was edited by Maasen and Weingart 2005.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Science Studies, University of Basel, Missionsstrasse 21, 4003, Basel, Switzerland

    Mario Kaiser

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  1. Mario Kaiser
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Correspondence to Mario Kaiser .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Programm für Wissenschaftsforschung, Universität Basel, Missionsstr. 21, Basel, 4003, Switzerland

    Mario Kaiser

  2. Programm für Wissenschaftsforschung, Universität Basel, Missionsstr. 21, Basel, 4003, Switzerland

    Monika Kurath

  3. Programm für Wissenschaftsforschung, Universität Basel, Missionsstr. 21, Basel, 4003, Switzerland

    Sabine Maasen

  4. Inst. Medizin- und, Universität Lübeck, Königstr. 42, Lübeck, 23552, Germany

    Christoph Rehmann-Sutter

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Kaiser, M. (2009). Futures Assessed: How Technology Assessment, Ethics and Think Tanks Make Sense of an Unknown Future. In: Kaiser, M., Kurath, M., Maasen, S., Rehmann-Sutter, C. (eds) Governing Future Technologies. Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook, vol 27. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2834-1_10

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