Science and Technology Studies

Other Futures: Politics of Utopias.
Famous utopias as well as the 20th century dystopias and contemporary science fiction designs are reviewed. The social background of these conceptions as well as the ideas of society and the use and meaning of technology incorporated in these utopias are discussed.

"This paper analyzes the role that different types of future-oriented technology analysis (FTA) have played in the development of nanotechnology governance. In the US, FTA has been used to create visionary concepts and to promote cooperation between and among agencies, departments of the federal government, academia, and stakeholders. In Germany FTA has mainly been used to shape and define research and innovation agendas of established science–industry networks. The aim of the paper is to show what problems/challenges with regard to the innovation system have been addressed and what main actors have been involved, from the first monitoring and forecasting studies on nanotechnology to the establishment of national nanotechnology programs and continuing on until today. The paper offers a comparative analysis of the use and role of FTA where the focus is not on individual activities, but rather on the longer-term interplay between the organizational settings in both countries and the future-oriented nanotechnology analysis.

In countries such as the US and Germany, where FTA on nanotechnology were already underway in the late 1980s, the early stages of FTA relied on expert-based methods such as technology intelligence and technology forecasting to define the field and to explore what could happen in general. Participatory formats such as dialogues on ethical, legal and social aspects (ELSA) became more important only later on. Especially the inter-organizational setting can be considered a crucial condition for maximizing the impact that participatory FTA can have in the future governance of nanotechnology."

"The emergence of new research practises and the changing conditions under which scientific research is undertaken are reconfiguring the landscape of science, technology development and innovation (STI) in Europe. Web 2.0 social media are changing the way scientists are collaborating in research (e.g. ‘Facebook for researchers’). Current research practices generate new kinds of data (e.g. participatory sensing) and research involves more and more actors as everyone is producing digital data everywhere that can be used for research (e.g. using mobile phone data for urban planning). The traditional scope of stakeholders is expanding to include citizens, patients and volunteers in conservation issues as well as a range of providers of online-platforms and research related services. Tensions are likely to arise between strategies to promote open access on the one hand and the significant market power of the main publishers and their databases used by science policy to measure the output of research and to determine funding on the other hand. The potential of research digitalization to impact science is huge; by changing research practices, changing ways of communicating and publishing research results and by challenging institutions and regulatory regimes that are established within national or transnational boundaries. These are examples of new ways of doing research that are related to new ways of organizing research on different levels ranging from the laboratory to the global landscape (Global Challenges). Science is expected to play a key role in society's response to emerging global grand challenges over the coming decades, even though different groups question the cultural authority of science.
The RIF project – Research and Innovation Futures 2030: From explorative to transformative scenarios – explores these issues. It focuses on analysing new and emerging ways of doing research in universities, research organisations, companies, and civil society. The RIF project concentrates on the dynamics of change resulting from the interplay of developments within STI systems and their societal context. It is based on the assumption that current trends and developments in STI are likely to give rise to tensions that need to be addressed.
This report arises from research that aims at systematizing knowledge on emerging patterns, trends and drivers of change in science, technology development and innovation. Its aim is to give an overview of trends and drivers in organizing research and to collect, compile, and condense the most up-to-date academic and forward-looking knowledge on new and emerging patterns of STI. It is based on recent and ongoing forward-looking activities (FLAs) and on a state-of-the-art review of scientific research on new concepts and changing patterns of doing and organizing research. Based on these main sources, a first set of changes, patterns, trends and drivers in doing and organizing research was identified, ranging from changes in the laboratory to global issues such as the search for international strategies to address global challenges.
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