Vision Assessment Shaping Technology In 21st Century Society

One way to shape technology and its embedding in society in the 21st century is through the visions that guide their development, especially concerning the long-term societal perspective. A critical discussion and assessment of these visions is a prerequisite for influencing the course of development. Technology assessment, therefore, has to provide a methodological repertoire for assessing and constructing visions, taking into account the requirements for long-term orientation as well as the need for public legitimation. This volume draws upon insights from technology assessment, political sciences, epistemology, sociology and ethics. It is to contribute to the recent literature in on "shaping technology", taking into account the "co-evolution of technology and society". It connects to that technology assessment literature that emphasises TA's pro-active role and its contribution to political judgement.

There has been a growing concern about the social and environmental risks which have come along with the progress achieved through a variety of mutually intertwined modernization processes. This book addresses how to understand the dynamics and governance of long term transformative change towards sustainable development.

This edited work studies the transition to renewable energy. It offers perspectives from a wide range of disciplines, addressing macro, regional and local scales. Important lessons are also drawn from historical transitions.

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.

​The exploration of ways to conceptualize the shaping of the present by socio‐technical futures is the aim of this volume. Therefore it brings together contributions from Science and Technology Studies and Technology Assessment, which focus all on the question how socio-technical images of the future shape present processes of innovation and transformation starting from empirical case studies and generalizing specific findings or by tackling conceptual questions from the outset. A white paper of 23 authors, which aims to sensitize researchers and practitioners completes the volume.

Summary: "Backcasting: looking back from a desirable future. Since the 1990s sustainable futures have been explored in backcasting experiments, numerous stakeholders have been involved and first steps have been planned in line with the envisioned sustainable futures. But what is the impact of these so-called backcasting experiments ten years later? Backcasting for a Sustainable Future: The impact after 10 years is the first book that systematically investigates the follow-up and spin-off of backcasting experiments seven to ten years after completion. It presents three case studies about (1) Novel Protein Foods and meat alternatives; (2) Sustainable Households and Nutrition; and (3) Multiple Sustainable Land-use in rural areas. The cases show that participatory backcasting may, but does not automatically lead to substantial follow-up and spinoff. Using innovation and learning theories the factors that affect the emergence of follow-up and new networks are identified and discussed. This book will be of great value to all those who work on sustainable futures and system innovations, such as researchers in system innovations, sustainability and social change, as well as policy-makers, transition experts and backcasting professionals."--Publisher description.