Simone Arnaldi

Living the Digital Revolution – Explorations into the Futures of the European Society

COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) is one of the longest-running European instruments supporting cooperation among scientists and researchers across Europe. COST is an intergovernmental framework composed of 35 countries, allowing the coordination of research that is otherwise funded on a European level, through the provision of platforms for European scientists to cooperate on a particular project and exchange expertise. As a precursor of advanced multidisciplinary research, COST contributes to reducing the fragmentation in European research investments and to opening the European Research Area to cooperation worldwide. It anticipates and complements the activities of the EU Framework Programmes, constituting a ‘bridge’ towards the scientific communities of emerging countries. It also increases the mobility of researchers across Europe, fostering the establishment of scientific excellence (see www.cost.esf.org ). COST Foresight 2030 was an initiative designed to explore a broadly-shared vision for a future world beyond 2030, permeated and shaped by the digital revolution. It consisted of a set of events presenting long-term perspectives in the selected fields – Information and Communication Technologies/Computer and Communication Sciences and Technologies (ICT/CCST), Energy, Food Security, Natural Resources Management, Life Enhancement and Society – which play fundamental roles in human life and which are envisaged to be highly influenced by ICT/CCST-enabling technologies. The workshop ‘Living the Digital Revolution: The European Society in 2030’, the concluding one of the six workshops of the initiative, gathered 20 distinguished scholars and experts from Europe and beyond (AU, NZ, US) for an exploratory brainstorming session. Representing various fields in the social sciences and humanities, such as sociology, education and learning, future studies, law and ethics, economics and business, demography and ICT, the experts focused on the possible trajectories of European societies with regard to the accelerating advancements in ICT/CCST leading up to 2030.

Turning the tide or surfing the wave? Responsible Research and Innovation, fundamental rights and neoliberal virtues.

The notion of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) has increasingly attracted attention in the academic literature. Up until now, however, the literature has focused on clarifying the principles for which research and innovation are responsible and on examining the conditions that account for managing them responsibly. Little attention has been reserved to exploring the political-economic context in which the notion of RRI has become progressively more prominent. This article tries to address this aspect and suggests some preliminary considerations on the connections between the specific understanding of responsibility in RRI and the framing of responsibility in what has been synthetically defined as ‘neoliberalism’. To do so, we try to illustrate how the idea of responsibility has evolved over time so that the specific characteristics of RRI can be better highlighted. These characteristics will then be discussed against the features of neoliberalism and its understanding of responsibility. Eventually, we reaffirm a view of RRI centred on fundamental rights as a possible point of departure between these two perspectives on responsibility.

Nanotechnologies and Equal Access to Healthcare

This editorial introduces a collection of articles that is a collaborative effort to discuss the impact of nanotechnology-based innovation on biomedical products development, on public health infrastructure, and on healthcare service delivery. The goal of this special issue of Studies in Ethics, Law, and Technology is to assess the effects of these transformations on the equity of access to healthcare, on the potential and actual disparities, especially at the international level, as well as to examine the possible strategies to make nanotechnology help attain the highest standard of health for all.

Expectations, Action Orientation and Implications for Responsibility

This chapter introduces the notion of expectations as the source of orientation in social relations. Expectations and their orientation function are discussed from the point of view of social theory, with selected examples from diverse sociological approaches. With no ambition to create a comprehensive picture, the chapter highlights the fact that all these approaches share the view that the stability and the inter-connectedness of expectations reduce the contingency of social interaction. This chapter moves on to consider how expectations have been conceptualized in the more specialised field of science and technology studies (STS) and how these future-oriented representations orient research and development activities, performing a coordination function of the relevant actors, setting constraints and enablers for their strategic activities and, ultimately, shaping the “possibility space” of technology development. The chapter then emphasises the novelty that STS introduces in dealing with the subject of expectations, when compared with mainstream social theory: materiality. In illustrating the place of expectations in action orientation, the chapter recognises however that action and the actor’s (anticipatory) knowledge is never immune from uncertainty. The final section of the chapter refers to trust as the element that allows us to bear the weight of uncertainty and permits us to orientate actions and establish relations when intractable contingency affects interaction.

Responsibility and Social Action

This chapter illustrates the different meanings of responsibility and establishes a link between this notion and the concepts of social action and social relation. The etymology of the word responsibility is examined and, by referring to philosophy and legal theory, the semantic complexity of this notion is addressed. The emphasis on action, its consequences and their assessment are considered as the key elements of responsibility. Three “modes of enactment” of responsibility (assumption, ascription, subjection) are distinguished as establishing different links between these elements in social processes. Max Weber’s definition of social action, which is an action oriented to the behaviour of others, is introduced to translate in sociological terms the “orientation to others” that the etymology of the word responsibility suggests. Drawing from Weber’s theory of action, responsibility is then seen as a combination of instrumentally rational and value-rational actions, which are social, in Weber’s sense, because they are oriented, in terms of causal consequences and meanings, to the behaviour of others. Following Max Weber again, “responsibility relations” are then seen as constituted by the mutual orientation of the three modes of enactment.

Science, Technology and Society Relationships as the Background of Responsibility

This chapter explores some major trends in science, technology and society relations as the background against which the responsible governance of science and technology is framed. The dimensions this chapter describes reflect the “essential elements of responsibility” identified in the first chapter: the consequences of action, the criteria for their assessment, and the actors that are involved. Accordingly, the chapter illustrates and discusses the following aspects of the relations between science, technology and society: (1) the impact of scientific knowledge and technology development on society; (2) the criteria considered legitimate to assess these impacts; (3) the actors that are considered relevant to steer and assess science, technology and their impacts on society. By examining significant examples of the literature, the chapter will present and discuss some of the most relevant patterns and trends which these different approaches share. The changing status and recognition of the uncertainty surrounding science, technology and their impacts is seen as a crucial aspect affecting these relations.

A Heuristic Framework for Responsibility

In this chapter, the notions of expectations, uncertainty, and trust are combined to formulate a framework that is able to track the changes of and conflicts over the three modes of enactment of responsibility (assumption, ascription, and subjection) we have identified. Before presenting the model, three dedicated sections summarise the considerations presented in the previous chapters on social action, expectations and trust. This analysis is then developed into a heuristic framework to explore the changing configurations of responsibility and to explore the conditions and factors explaining these changes. The functioning of the framework is exemplified by outlining a brief sketch of two broad ideal types of responsibility in science and technology (focused responsibility and diffuse responsibility), which draws on the account of science, technology and society trends described in the preceding chapter.

Introduction: Nanotechnologies and the Quest for Responsibility

This chapter provides an introduction to the issue of responsibility in nanotechnology development. After introducing the growing relevance of responsible development in nanotechnology policy and regulation, the chapter illustrates the structure of the volume and highlights three major aspects of responsibility that the book addresses: (1) responsibility and social relationships; (2) responsibility, division of social labour and institutional settings; (3) responsibility and orientation to the future. Eventually, the chapter suggests that the considerations proposed in the book about the responsible development of nanotechnologies offer useful entry points to frame a broader discussion on the responsible governance of emerging technologies.

Who Is Responsible? Nanotechnology and Responsibility in the Italian Daily Press

The chapter examines the news stories about nanotechnology in the Italian daily press to identify the different representations of responsibility in the coverage. The chapter extends the current research on the definition of responsibility by nanotechnology practitioners and highlights how responsibility is predominantly defined in the terms of the ‘traditional contract of science’. This implies that scientists’ responsibility is primarily to advance scientific knowledge and deliver to society the benefits promised by scientific progress. Also, the analysis shows that the division of labour underlying the ‘traditional contract of science’ also limits the number and variety of topics on which different social actors can be rightfully considered as sources for the coverage. More specifically, the discussion of radical uncertainties surrounding the nanotechnology enterprises, of precautionary measures, of new institutional arrangements for deliberation on science and technology, is left entirely to civil society organizations, citizens, and humanities scholars.

Unlocking the Futures of Nanotechology. Future-Oriented Narratives and Access to the Public Discourse on Nanoscale

Futuristic visions have accompanied the development of nanotechnology since Eric K. Drexler popularized the word with his 1986 book Engines of creation. Future-oriented narratives about expectations and promises of nanoscale technologies have a centre stage in the public discourse, but their statute is anything but controversial. Both prospected innovations and the discourse on anticipated innovations have garnered attention by scholars and commentators: on the one hand, literature focused on the transformative and disruptive power of nanoscale technologies, discussing their potential ethical, social, economic impacts (e.g. HLEG 2005; Ott and Papilloud 2007; Roco and Bainbridge 2001, 2002; Whitman 2007); on the other hand, the disrupting impacts of the underlying values and assumptions of visions and future-oriented narratives on our current ethical and cultural system have been examined (Cameron 2006; Grunwald 2007; Khushf 2005; Schummer 2007).