The CNS-ASU Program

RTTA Program 3: Deliberation and Participation

Goal: To develop multiple, plausible visions nanotechnology-enabled futures, elucidate public preferences – especially values from underserved communities – for various alternatives and, using such preferences, help further refine future visions and enhance contextual awareness.

Activity 1: Scenario Development: As claims about nanotechnologies continue to proliferate, most significant outputs and outcomes of NSE remain speculative – awaiting not only the maturation of the relevant science and engineering but also the complex transition from laboratory to embedding in social networks via the marketplace, government, universities, and other sectors. This complex transition is a central nexus in the co-production of knowledge and society. The development of speculative technological and design scenarios focuses attention on various potential paths of co-production through this nexus. While scenarios are increasingly recognized as a valuable tool for participatory decision making about technology and design, we push the engagement process further upstream, first to imagine where NSE could go, and then to explore the consequently enabled design choices. For each of the two Thematic Research programs, we will bring together groups of NSE researchers and entrepreneurs to develop scenarios of what the short-, medium-, and long-term possibilities of NSE relevant to that theme may be. These Scenario Development workshops do not purport to achieve predictive accuracy (which, if not impossible, is unverifiable), but rather to extrapolate from current expert knowledge to envision a variety of plausible scientific and technological trajectories and outputs.

Activity 2: InnovationSpace: Through a transdisciplinary ASU program, “InnovationSpace,” teams of design, engineering, and business students and faculty will work to visualize how the scenarios developed in Activity 1 could translate into usable products. Two InnovationSpace teams will operate each year, starting in year 2. Drawing on the output from the Scenario Development workshops, InnovationSpace teams will produce “new venture proposals,” which include a product design concept, business/marketing assessment, engineering assessment, and communication strategy. The proposals present scenarios of how nanotechnologies might be applied to everyday life. Central to InnovationSpace is engaging with a variety of potential users to develop design concepts that meet real needs, given engineering and marketing considerations. This process of engagement, using standard field observation and interview techniques, allows us to elicit and document a range of potential responses to technological implications and design options of NSE.

Activity 3: CriticalCorps: To help illuminate the social significance and consequences of the scenarios and design concepts as they are developed, we will call upon CriticalCorps, a recently formed interdisciplinary group at ASU. Using methods developed in cultural studies, CriticalCorps will situate artifacts, scenarios, and new venture proposals within cultural, social, political, environmental, and economic contexts. It will provide critical analyses as scenarios are created, and engage with InnovationSpace teams so that their work is better informed by contextual understandings. CriticalCorps’ analysis of scenarios and InnovationSpace will lead to: research that clarifies how designers, scientists, and engineers may inform and influence each other’s discourses, practices, and outcomes; novel analyses of the new objects, images, spaces, and services that will emerge when nanotechnologies enters everyday life; and multidisciplinary educational opportunities for studying the design dimensions, material manifestations, and societal implications of NSE.

Activity 4: National Citizens’ Technology Forum (NCTF): The citizens’ technology forum is an extensive and intensive form of public deliberation. CNS-ASU will conduct the first nation-wide CTF in the US in year 3. We will recruit a panel of citizens, provide them with detailed background information about NSE and access to NSE experts, and allow them to develop a set of recommendations for decision makers, all with the support of the research team and a professional facilitator. The NCTF will involve six university groups (ASU, GA Tech, Wisconsin, Colorado, University of New Hampshire, and one other institution to be selected), deliberating simultaneously. Using procedures developed at NCSU (under NSF 0242994), the groups will periodically deliberate together on the Internet, allowing participants in multiple locations to interact. The NCTF activity also includes pre- and post-tests to evaluate the effect of the event on participants. We expect the NCTF to be a major focal point of outreach, engagement, and learning and an integrative activity among Center universities.

Deliberation and Participation Program Leaders: Patrick Hamlett (NCSU) and Daniel Sarewitz (ASU)
 

RTTA Program 1: Research and Innovation System Analysis (RISA)
RTTA Program 2: Public Opinion and Values

RTTA Program 4: Reflexivity, Assessment and Evaluation