Stefan Böschen

The alignment of science, technology, and innovation with societal values and concerns is a key objective of governance approaches that include technology assessment, responsible (research and) innovation, and anticipatory governance. Such alignment is supposed to take place, inter alia, in anticipatory practices involving technoscientific experts, stakeholders, and publics, whose views are then integrated into research and development. However, we lack knowledge on how alignment is accomplished in practice, and the conditions under which it perpetuates or chal- lenges the anticipation of technocratic and market-oriented futures, especially in commercially competitive environments. This article aims to fill this gap by introducing the concept of antici- patory alignment work. Through a case study on an innovation ecosystem emerging around neu- romorphic computing technology, the article demonstrates the analytical potential of the concept. In analyzing different modes of anticipatory alignment work, the study reveals how politics shapes alignment and keeps anticipation locked in dominant constructions of the past and pre- sent. The article casts doubt on the optimism typically implicit in science, technology, and innovation governance approaches that promise the advancement of societal alignment, while also discussing opportunities for these approaches to foster novel forms of anticipation.

This article explores the integration of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) principles within living labs, particularly focusing on engineering and innovation practices. It reviews the evolution of living labs over the last 20 years, their roles in fostering co-responsibility among stakeholders, collaborative knowledge production and directing innovations toward socially desirable ends. It proposes the concept of Responsible Research and Innovation Labs (RRI Labs) tailored for engineering practices.

This article explores the modelling of social problems from the point of view of experimental practices. As we observe an expansion of experimental spaces in the present, especially in the form of real-world labs (living labs), the question arises how knowledge for collective problem-solving is produced in the hybrid zone between different social fields and heterogeneous actors. The analytical lens applied here is knowledge modelling using indicators. The question is, how against the background of different qualities in political discourses (political ability, will and obligation) a balance in problem-solving can be found, how work by means of indicators can take hold, or whether the factual content of problem situations is distorted by indicator politics. These questions are pointedly developed using the example of real-world laboratories.

Die Synthetische Chemie hat ein schillerndes Gesicht. Auf der Basis der Synthetischen Chemie wurden die Stoffumsatzprozesse moderner Gesellschaften weitreichend umgebaut. Welche Fülle von Stoffen – »Better things for better living through Chemistry«, so der in den 1930er Jahren kreierte Slogan von DuPont – wurde erzeugt und veränderte damit die Lebenswelt moderner Menschen grundlegend. Durch die industrielle Organisation der Forschungsergebnisse chemischer Forschung konnte die Synthetische Chemie unmittelbar ökonomisch und kulturell wirksam werden.

Die Wissenschaften erzeugen mit neuem Wissen gleichzeitig auch verschiedene Formen des Nichtwissens. Dieser scheinbar paradoxe Zusammenhang der "Ko-Produktion" von Wissen und Nichtwissen wird in der Wissenschaftsforschung in jungster Zeit zunehmend anerkannt. Mit dem Konzept "Nichtwissenskulturen" lasst sich sowohl theoretisch begreifen als auch empirisch analysieren, wie wissenschaftliche Erkenntnispraktiken mit dem Wissen zugleich neue Raume gewussten wie nicht-gewussten Nichtwissens hervorbringen. Wissenskulturen sind daher auch Nichtwissenskulturen, die sich anhand spezifischer Charakteristika ebenso voneinander unterscheiden wie vergleichen lassen. Die unterschiedlichen Nichtwissenskulturen stellen wichtige Bezugspunkte in den offentlich-politischen Debatten uber den Umgang mit Nichtwissen dar. In diesen Nichtwissensdiskursen kann die Anerkennung einer Pluralitat gleichrangiger Nichtwissenskulturen wichtige neue Perspektiven und Reaktionsmoglichkeiten eroffnen. Mit Beitragen von Stefan Boschen, Karen Kastenhofer, Jens Soentgen, Peter Wehling.

Visions and imaginaries have been longstanding research topics in Science and Technology Studies. Visions of sociotechnical change often ascribe responsibility for achieving the desired change to specific actors. However, there is little research on how visions create, change, and preserve responsibilities in the present. Drawing on Vision Assessment, we present a case-study on visions of neuromorphic computing in NeuroSys, a research and innovation cluster located in the Aachen region in Germany, which develops brain-inspired computing technology, also known as neuromorphic computing. Based on interviews, participant observation, and document analysis, we identify a core vision, which imagines the region as a prominent center of neuromorphic computing, and three satellite visions, focusing on, respectively, entrepreneurship, science, and society. We analyze all visions through the lens of “responsibility boundary-work” operating in the dimensions of time, space, and actor constellation. This concept captures the selective conferral and deferral of responsibilities through visions, highlighting how normative boundaries are drawn in local practices. We further shed light on the larger institutional conditions shaping responsibility boundary-work by attending to the “politics of visions.” Power struggles are enacted through the ways in which visions confer and defer responsibilities. Tensions between these practices reflect conflicts over desirable social orders and power distributions within them, revealing the socio-political nature of visions. We discuss the implications of these findings for governance approaches that pursue responsible research and technology development, and we conclude that responsibility boundary-work may limit the potential of governance to conceive of and work toward responsible futures.

Die Synthetische Chemie hat ein schillerndes Gesicht. Auf der Basis der Synthetischen Chemie wurden die Stoffumsatzprozesse moderner Gesellschaften weitreichend umgebaut. Welche Fülle von Stoffen – »Better things for better living through Chemistry«, so der in den 1930er Jahren kreierte Slogan von DuPont – wurde erzeugt und veränderte damit die Lebenswelt moderner Menschen grundlegend. Durch die industrielle Organisation der Forschungsergebnisse chemischer Forschung konnte die Synthetische Chemie unmittelbar ökonomisch und kulturell wirksam werden.

While in the beginning of the environmental debate, conflicts over environmental and technological issues had primarily been understood in terms of ‘‘risk’’, over the past two decades the relevance of ignorance, or nonknowledge, was emphasized. Referring to this shift of attention to nonknowledge the article presents two main findings: first, that in debates on what is not known and how to appraise it different and partly conflicting epistemic cultures of nonknowledge can be discerned and, second, that drawing attention to nonknowledge in technology conflicts results in significant institutional effects and new constellations of actors in public debates. To illustrate and substantiate this political dynamics of nonknowledge we draw upon examples from the areas of agri-biotechnology and mobile phoning. In a first step, we develop in greater detail the concept of scientific cultures of nonknowledge and identify three such cultures involved in the social conflicts within the two areas. Subsequently, we analyze the specific dynamics of the politicisation of nonknowledge looking at the variety of actors involved and the pluralisation of perceptions and evaluations of what is not known. Then, we point out some of the institutional reactions to the political and cultural dynamics of scientific nonknowledge. We argue that the equal recognition of the diverse cultures of nonknowledge is a key prerequisite for socially legitimate and ‘‘robust’’ decision-making under conditions of politicised scientific nonknowledge.