Assessing The Societal Implications Of Emerging Technologies

A growing problem of interest in the field of science and technology policy is that the next generation of innovations is arriving at an accelerating rate, and the governance system is struggling to catch up. Current approaches and institutions for effective technology assessment are ill suited and poorly designed to proactively address the multidimensional, interconnected societal impacts of science and technology advancements that are already taking place and expected to continue over the course of the 21st century. This book offers tangible insights into the strategies deployed by well-known, high-profile organizations involved in anticipating the various societal and policy implications of nanotechnology and synthetic biology. It focuses predominantly on an examination of the practices adopted by the often-cited and uniquely positioned Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies in the United States, as well as being informed by comparisons with a range of institutions also interested in embedding forward-looking perspectives in their respective area of innovation. The book lays out one of the first actionable roadmaps that other interested stakeholders can follow when working toward institutionalizing anticipatory governance practices throughout the policymaking process.

This book systematically addresses the issue of assessing the normative nature of visions of emerging technologies in an epistemologically robust way. In the context of democratic governance of emerging technologies, not only it is important to reflect on technologies’ moral significance, but also to address their emerging and future oriented character. The book proposes an original approach to deal with the issue of “plausible” ethical evaluation of new technologies. Taking its start from current debates about Technology Assessment, the proposed solution emerges as a combination of theoretical and methodological insights from the fields of Philosophy of Technology, Science and Technology Studies and a normative justification based on pragmatist ethics. The book’s main contribution is to engage a diverse and interdisciplinary audience (ethicists, philosophers, social scientists, technology assessment researchers and practitioners) in a reflection concerning the epistemological challenges that are associated to the endeavour of appraising the moral significance of emerging technologies in the attempt of democratically governing them. It brings together concepts and methodologies from different disciplines and shows their synergy in applying them to two specific case studies of emerging biomedical technologies.

Despite the topic’s urgency and centrality, this is the first edited volume to offer a comprehensive assessment of the varying approaches to early engagement with new technologies, including nanotechnology, synthetic biology, biotechnology and ICT. Covering five main approaches to early engagement—constructive technology assessment (CTA), value-sensitive design (VSD), midstream modulation (MM), the network approach for moral evaluation, and political technology assessment—the book will be a pivotal text in the rapidly developing research field of ELSI, which explores the ethical, legal, and social implications of new technologies. Featuring leading scholars who discuss each early engagement approach in turn, the chapters cover both theory and applications, and include evaluative assessments of specific instances of early adoption of technologies. Further contributions focus on theoretical issues relevant to all approaches, including interdisciplinary cooperation, normativity and intervention, and political and public relevance. The publication has added profile due to the requirement of multi-billion-dollar research programs in the US and Europe to engage in ELSI research alongside that of the technical development itself, even in the early stages. Its comprehensive scrutiny of the core factors in early engagement will ensure a readership of policy makers as well as scientists and engineers.

The embedding of any new technologies in society is challenging. The evolving state of the scientific art, often-unquantifiable risks and ill-defined developmental trajectories have the potential to hinder innovation and/or the commercial success of a technology. The are, however, a number of tools that can now be utilized by stakeholders to bridge the chasm that exists between the science and innovation dimensions on the one hand, and the societal dimensions on the other. This edited volume will draw together leading researchers from the domains of law, philosophy, political science, public administration and the natural sciences in order to demonstrate how tools such as, for example, constructive technology assessment, regulatory governance and societal scenarios, may be employed by stakeholders to assist in successfully embedding new technologies into society. This volume will focus primarily on the embedding of two emergent and emerging technologies: nanotechnologies and synthetic biology. Government, industry and the epistemic community continue to struggle with how best to balance the promised benefits of an emerging technology with concerns about its potential impacts. There is a growing body of literature that has examined these challenges from various cultural, scientific and jurisdictional dimensions. There is, however, much work that still needs to be done; this includes articulating the successes and failures of attempts to the societal embedding of technologies and their associated products. This edited volume is significant and timely, as unlike other books currently on the market, it shall draw from real work experiences and experiments designed anticipate the societal embedding of emerging technologies. This empirical work shall be supported by robust theoretical underpinnings.

"Understanding the technology dynamics is a required capability in today's technology driven industries. This volume focuses on three areas: technology assessment, technology forecasting and technology diffusion. It shows: an introduction to different types of assessment methods and applications from different sectors including energy, healthcare and communications; technology forecasting and foresight and a review of conventional and emerging methods; and the diffusion of technologies by exploring adoption of products and services from different sectors."--Back cover.

"This book presents case studies, literature reviews, ethnographies, and frameworks supporting the emerging technologies of RFID implants while also highlighting the current and predicted social implications of human-centric technologies"--Provided by publisher.

Novel Beings is a forward-looking exploration into the divide between proactive and reactive regulatory approaches to the cross-section of biotechnology and artificial intelligence (AI) research. Addressing an innovative area of academic study, Novel Beings questions how this research, which has the potential to create new forms of morally valuable life, could be regulated.