Anticipatory Governance in Practice? Nanotechnology Policy in Cambridge, Massachusetts

Abstract

Anticipatory governance has emerged as an important new concept for understanding the governance of science and technology (Guston 2008; Barben et al. 2007). Anticipation, as discussed in this literature, moves away from the idea of “prediction,” and “denotes building the capacity to respond to unpredicted and unpredictable risks” (Guston 2008, 940). The dictionary defines predict (2009) as an ability to know the future, to “foretell on the basis of observation, experience, or scientific reason.” Given the uncertain nature of future technological trajectories and lack of certainty regarding risks related to emerging technologies (such as nanotechnology), however, it is generally impossible to “predict” the future of technologies on any but the shortest of time scales. Instead, anticipatory governance seeks to build society-wide capacities for governing science and technology: to inquire into, assess, and deliberate (1) what new and emerging technologies might mean for society; (2) how they might contribute to enhancing societal outcomes or to creating novel risks; and (3) what kinds of future technological societies people might desire to inhabit. At the same time, anticipatory governance seeks mechanisms to feed insights from these assessments and deliberations back into the process of scientific and technological innovation to help inform the construction of technological futures (Guston and Sarewitz 2002).