Does the US need more public participation in assessing technologies and their potential impact on society, and informing decisions on their development and use? Richard Sclove – author of a new report on technology assessment – thinks yes; but only as part of a new paradigm for technology assessment. The report, published today by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Science & Technology Innovation Program, announces plans for a new Expert and Citizen Assessment of Science and Technology Network (ECAST), which would compliment expert input with participatory technology assessment to help inform decisions on developing new and emerging technologies.
I’m currently reading Robert Winston’s new book “Bad Ideas? An arresting history of our inventions” (slowly, as regular followers of 2020 Science will realize!). Starting from the earliest indications of innovation amongst humans – from tool-making and the development of language – and ending up at the present day, he takes a hard look at what innovation has cost us over the ages, as well as what we have gained from it. Reading it, one can’t help ask the question (as I suspect the author intended) – are we slaves to innovation, or can we control the process?
Technology Assessment in all its guises is a rejection of the former, and an attempt to embrace the latter. It is based on the assumption that, if only we can get some insight into where a particular technology innovation is going and what the broader social and economic consequences might be, we should be able to tweak the system to increase the benefits and decrease the downsides.
As an idea, it’s an attractive one. Having the foresight to identify potential hurdles to progress ahead of time and make decisions that help overcome them at an early stage makes sound sense. If businesses wants to develop products that are sustainable over long periods, governments want to craft policies that have long-reaching positive consequences and citizens want to support actions that will benefit them and their children, any intelligence on the potential benefits and pitfalls associated with a new technology is invaluable to informed decision-making.
The trouble is, making sense of a complex future where technology, social issues, politics, economics and sheer human irrationality collide, is anything but straight forward.
Back in 1972, the US Congress established the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) to handle exactly this type of challenge. For 23 years , OTA took a relatively formal and meticulous approach to assessing emerging technologies for Congress, based on expert input and analysis. When the Office was closed in 1995, many considered it a blow to informed policy on science and technology within the US. Ironically, as the US (along with the rest of the world) now squares up to some of the most complex science and technology-based issues and opportunities ever to face humanity, the tools that might help inform forward-looking decisions on how to navigate this technology-driven future are rather conspicuously lacking.
Into this void comes today’s report from Dr. Richard Sclove – founder and senior Fellow of the Loka Institute. Sclove argues that we need to take a proactive role in determining the trajectory of technology for the good of society, but that a changing world demands new approaches – the OTA of 1972 (he suggests) would look conspicuously out of place in today’s fast pace, interconnected world. Specifically, he argues that citizens need a place at the table – not instead of experts, but as a valuable voice alongside those of others in evaluating how technology-driven futures might most appropriately evolve.
Richard makes a strong case for what he terms participatory Technology Assessment – or pTA. He argues that in a democracy, citizens should have the right to help decide how technology is developed and used; that citizens bring a range of social values to the table which are critical to determining technology trajectories and can help select potentially more sustainable ways forward; that engaging a broad base of people expands the knowledge base on which decisions are made; that citizen involvement can improve the effectiveness of decisions that are made, and help avoid costly mis-steps; and that pTA can even lead to expedited conclusions (although I am still struggling to see how asking more people for their perspectives and input can lead to a faster process).
The challenge is, how to make this work – and work in a way where citizens are fully engaged in the process of decision making, rather than just being a token presence.
Sclove quickly dismisses the option of re-instating the OTA (or a similar institutionalized body) as being outdated, unlikely to embrace pTA (the OTA did not engage citizens in technology assessment generally), and too focused on serving institutions within government rather than society as a whole. He also challenges the suggestion that sufficient technology assessment is already carried out by a range of government offices, including the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the Congressional Research Service (CRS).
Instead, an alternative is offered – an independent network of institutions that work together to carry out a combination of expert and participatory technology assessment.
The result is ECAST – the Expert & Citizen Assessment of Science & Technology Network; a proposed independent network of organizations that can facilitate and conduct technology assessments that are not only responsive to 21st century challenges, but also make full use of 21st century opportunities.
As presented in the report, ECAST is in the initial stages of formation, supported by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Boston Museum of Science, the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes at Arizona State University, Science CheerLeader, and The Loka Institute. However, there are clearly plans to expand this network.
The model as it stands is based on working through science museums (as a direct link to citizens), universities (bringing innovative ideas and research and analysis capabilities to the table) and non-partisan policy research organizations (providing policy relevance, and interfacing with decision makers). While at an early stage of development, it clearly draws on the ideas of independence, input from experts and laypersons, and strong connections to policymakers (the report stresses the need for a physical presence in Washington DC).
Does the idea have legs? I’m not sure yet, although I would be the first to agree that movement along these lines is desperately needed if the US is to develop strategic and sustainable technology innovation policies. Looking to the future, it’s hard to justify letting innovation run its course without any form of intervention – if the recent economic crisis has taught us anything, it’s that. As advances in science and technology, global communications and coupling between humanity and the environment in which we live continue to converge together, there is a social and economic imperative to help ensure technology innovation leads to long-term progress. And assuming that everything will fall out in the wash without proactive intervention is both naive and short sighted. The only real question is how to go about controlling the future.
I would argue strongly that, as stakeholders in the future, citizens have a right and a responsibility to be a part the process. Richard’s proposal is definitely a significant move in this direction. It’s not perfect – I have questions over the legitimacy of the process, sources of funding, the ability of the proposed network to make a difference, and translating academic ideals into practical reality. Nevertheless, it’s an exciting and innovative step forward, and one that I will be following with interest.
I don’t particularly like the thought that we are slaves to innovation – I may be overly optimistic, but I would like to believe that humanity has the ability to choose future courses that are more likely to improve people’s lives. But as our “inventions” get increasingly more sophisticated, it’s going to take more than luck and good intentions to ensure that what looks good on paper doesn’t turn out to be yet another “bad idea.” Hopefully, innovations like ECAST will help empower people to work together towards a future in which technology innovation is more likely to solve problems, than create new ones.
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I feel I should add a disclaimer to this post, as Richard Sclove’s report was published by an organization I was a part of until recently – the Science & Technology Innovation Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center. However, I was not in any way associated with the development and writing of the report, and indeed the first time I saw it was earlier today when it was publicly released.
Thanks for this Andrew. I haven’t read this paper yet, but obviously support its thinking in principle.
But also read Robert Winston’s Bad Idea and heard him speak last night. He was very persuasive about the need to create a culture of interest in science, not just science outreach and challenges scientists and all those involved to think differently about their engagement and communication.
I initially resisted his view that we all have a duty to engage with science, but when he spoke last night of the randomness of science, the randomness of successful innovation and the negative repercussions of all our endeavours, I started to think he may be right.
But that will take a lot more than better outreach in science museums and even these Centres. It will take a dramatic shift in communication from everyone in the science ‘supply chain’, an difference in accountability of these actors, including ourselves and a shift in our attitudes to certainty and uncertainty. This is not easy, or probably even doable.
Lots of food for thought!
Thanks Hilary,
Am coming to the end of Bad Ideas (eventually – the long reading period being due to work overload rather than the book itself), and will be interested to see how his concluding ideas jive with emerging thinking on the dynamic between science and society.
As usual, Andrew, you have written a thought-provoking entry. The issue of whether we become enslaved by our own innovations is a fascinating one. One thing that comes t to my mind here is scale. One grain of silica is a speck of mineral, but 100 billion grains (more?) becomes a beach. That’s a nice consequence of scaling up, but what happens when you scale technology up. That too can be good, but not always. A test tube of chlorofluorocarbon in a chemist’s bench top in the 1920s looks like an answer to the deadly refrigerants of the day, but scaling production up year after year for the many uses CFCs ended up having, and we find ourselves confronted with unexpected and threatening consequences such as damage to the planet’s protective ozone layer. Now think of a computer, then millions of them, then all of them connected, then all of them connected with computer chips embedded in our electrical grid, transportation system, and other pillars of the infrastructure. It’s not that we become enslaved to the individual parts, but rather to the system these components grow into without anyone really making a decision that such growth should happen. The systems builds up partly with planning and partly because the technologically literate often operate in the do-it-because-we-can mode. In time, the system can become too big to fail, too big to fully understand, too big to consider dismantling or reconfiguring. As someone who has been in the world of journalism, it is amazing to see how the technology and practices of the Internet coupled to catastrophic but expected cyclic events like major downturns in economies can foist upon us changes and choices. Journalism is deconstructing on its way to some kind of reconstruction (I hope!), but this seismic moment in journalism happened kind of the way an earthquake does–it was not brought on by choice. Perhaps this is not evidence of enslavement to technological innovation, but it is evidence that our technology is susceptible to large macroforces that can inadvertently turn it into our masters.
Looking at technology innovation over the centuries, it sometimes seems that the idea that we are in charge of our destiny is merely an illusion – we are programmed to be inventive it seems, and it’s very hard to temper that programming with forethought. But that’s no excuse not to try!
Well, I’ll be brief and therefore somewhat cryptic.
I think this depends on what “we” we are talking about ;-).
Also, related to that, I think there are two ignored large “elephants in the room,” so to speak, in these conversations–culture and power. What role does culture play in all of this? (e.g., some cultures have built ecological forethought into the very basis of their cultures, others have not).
Who has power? Who doesn’t? Who is really “in charge”?
Sorry, that’s cryptic food for thought…
Maria
Thoughtful comments, Andrew.
Early on your mention that technology assessment (TA) “is based on the assumption that, if only we can get some insight into where a particular technology innovation is
going . . . we should be able to tweak the system to increase the benefits and decrease the downsides.” As written, that is exactly right. Although if you read my report carefully, you’ll see that I’m interested in seeing if we can push the capability of TA (both participatory and not) to move beyond only studying one “particular technology” at a time to also considering the synergistic interactions among complexes of (seemingly unrelated) techs. Sounds impossible, but it’s an issue I’ve directed attention to for years (including via one NSF-funded project). I don’t think we’ll ever be able to do that with anything approaching perfection, but I’ve got empirically grounded reasons for thinking we can make some headway on it.
As to how participatory technology assessment (pTA) might conceivably expedite decisions: In my report, I address only one aspect of that: the time from initiating a TA project to concluding it. Empirically, pTA projects are often organized and concluded in less time than the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment took to conclude one of its projects.
But in your blog you’re raising the issue of the time it takes for the wider society (or a government body) to reach and implement a decision. My report only alludes to that issue indirectly. But if you think about it, pTA obviously can sometimes to lead to swifter decisions on that score, in at least some instances. Sure, sometimes including more people will lead to mobilizing more interests, raising more questions, and slowing innovation (which can be a good thing, if it leads to a better, more thoughtful
decision and social outcome). But, conversely, think about cases where a decision to implement a technology is made relatively swiftly and implemented with no popular input . . . and then encounters years or decades of popular resistance (aspects of
nuclear power and radioactive waste disposal are the poster child for this kind of thing.) In such cases, expanded popular involvement at much earlier stages might lead to different upstream R&D or innovation decisions that could ultimately be implemented more expeditiously and with better social results. (Although proving that in the real world might be impossible, since you won’t have the empirical counterfactual to prove how it would have gone without citizen engagement).
Thanks for the clarification Richard. You’re right of course, when you see pTA in a broader context of sustainable development (in terms of development that doesn’t hit catastrophic or severely limiting barriers early on), up-front participation of laypersons certainly has the potential to enable things to go faster (if this is appropriate) and more smoothly in the long run.
Particularly interesting that you raise the issue of slowing innovation as a potentially good thing in some cases. I think this is an idea that we shy away from in the US, where the dogma of innovation is so deeply entrenched. Yet if citizens are to be empowered to be partners in the process of technology innovation, there has to be this possibility of slowing down “progress” at times – otherwise there is no real empowerment.