The renaissance of techno-utopianism as a challenge for responsible innovation

ABSTRACT

Responsible research and innovation aspires to anticipate and assesses potential implications of innovations. Hence, emerging technologies are a crucial issue for this mode of foresight and governance. The case of nanotechnology demonstrated that discourses on those emerging technologies are increasingly shaped by techno-utopian narratives. We argue that these narratives are here to stay, because they are an expression of a contemporary medialization of science and technology. Since the RI community can neither ignore nor escape these techno-utopian narratives, it might engage in a hermeneutic reading of these visions as performative fiction. We use the case of desktop 3D printing to demonstrate in what way an analysis of techno-utopianism is able to reveal how responsibility for innovation gets redistributed.

KEYWORDS:

• Techno-utopianism
• responsible innovation
• performative fiction
• social construction of reality
• niche innovation

The renaissance of techno-utopianism

Techno-utopias are communicated visions of a desired future that is radically different from the present (Dickel and Schrape 2017). Modern utopianism emerged with a new social concept of time, a paradigm of an open future, which can be shaped by human agency (Adam and Groves 2007; Koselleck 1989). An eschatological understanding of time was displaced by a utopian one, which emphasized society’s abilities to overcome the shortcomings of the past and create a better future, in which modern core values like equality, liberty or wealth might be fully realized (Nassehi 1994, 48).

Much has been written about the crisis of utopian thinking in the ‘postmodern’ era. An alleged decline of utopianism has been attributed to a public deconstruction of modern ideas of progress and unity (Dickel 2014, 228–231), as well as to a disenchantment of time itself by technical rationalities (Nassehi 1994, 60). These diagnoses of utopian decline, however, have hardly reflected the utopian potentials of emerging technologies. Especially since the turn of the millennium, a renaissance of techno-utopian discourses (e.g. on the ubiquitous digitalization of society) can be witnessed which sometimes even exceed the techno-utopian tune of high modernity.

Techno-utopian discourses conceive technology not as a force of disenchantment but as a re-enchantment of our contemporary world. They revolve around different kinds of emerging technologies, some of them outright futuristic (Grunwald 2014) like artificial superintelligence (Bostrom 2014) or (post-)human enhancement (Kurzweil 2005); some apparently in the making, like synthetic biology and autonomous cars; others – like 3D printing and ‘Big Data’ – already existing and associated with boundless future potentials.

Narrative patterns of utopian discourses

Techno-utopias¹ share some key narrative patterns. The authors of this paper analyzed different visionary discourses, e.g. on human enhancement (Dickel 2011), climate engineering (Dickel 2013), Web 2.0 infrastructures and their social effects (Dolata and Schrape 2016; Schrape 2012), ‘Big Data’ (Schrape 2016a) as well as 3D printing (Dickel and Schrape 2016) which reproduce similar utopian patterns. In the following sections, we will use our case study on desktop 3D printing to illustrate these patterns.²

• Ontology (‘How is reality constructed?’): Techno-utopias criticize a given societal configuration in the light of possible radical alternatives enabled by new technologies. Situated technologies are isolated from their original frame of reference and reframed as a universal alternative. In techno-utopian discourses, desktop 3D printers – currently machines with very limited technological capabilities – become prototypes of the next industrial revolution (Anderson 2012). The vision of a decentralized and personalized regime of production provides a utopian standpoint to criticize the regime of industrial mass production (Boyer 2004).

• Temporality (‘How is time constructed?’): The distinction between critique (of the status quo) and the (visionary) alternative is translated into a temporal difference between past and future, with the present being represented as a transitional turning point in which existing structures can be overcome in order to realize the alternate possibilities of the future. Contemporary visions are thereby decoupled from past experiences with legacy technologies. The disappointments about previous techno-utopias are either simply forgotten or attributed to difficulties in the past that have since been overcome. Technological innovations like desktop 3D printers combined with digital platforms which enable the global sharing of blueprints for production are transformed into revolutionary instruments that might unlock the possibilities of a new era of ‘personal fabrication’ (Gershenfeld 2005). Previous utopian discourses on emancipatory do-it-yourself technologies tend to be either ignored or are conceived as predecessors which placed their hopes in immature technologies (Dickel and Schrape 2016; Tocchetti 2012).

• Sociality (‘How are actors constructed?’): Visionary proponents of an emerging technology position themselves as public intellectuals, which claim to possess important insights for the future. Society is divided into agents of (socio-technical) change on the one hand, and the rest of society on the other – explicitly or implicitly (through its practices) legitimizing the status quo. In the case of 3D printing, technology journalists and public academics popularize the technology and position themselves as proponents of a new participatory age of production and innovation in which unfulfilled ideals of democratization empowerment and sustainability could be realized – if society is ready to embrace the new technological options (Anderson 2012; Rifkin 2014). The behavior and usage preferences of the early users of new technologies are extended to entire social milieus, or even the population at large, without any regard for the unique social backgrounds of these ‘early adopters’. In the popular staging of a ‘maker culture’ (Barba 2015; Davies 2016) of 3D printing enthusiasts, every citizen is equally addressed as a potential maker.

Techno-utopianism in medialized innovation regimes

No one has ever arrived in utopia. Utopia is like a rainbow, which sometimes seems to be just around the corner but is ultimately impossible to reach. Utopias are thus always present futures (Luhmann 1976). Their power does not depend on the realization of an imagined alternative to the status quo, but on their performativity in the present. Contemporary techno-utopianism is situated in an emerging technoscientific regime (Nordmann 2011) that popularizes existing and anticipated innovations to attract attention and funding, to create and sustain interested publics and to legitimize socio-technical change. Popular techno-utopias adapt to general selection criteria of mass media (Luhmann 2000; Schrape 2016b) – e.g. topicality, magnitude, conflict, relevance to daily life – and accordingly offer an ideal basis for journalistic exploitation. Hence, techno-utopias tend to simplify complex social and technological issues. Their performative effect is a decontextualization of technologies from their specific societal conditions.

The performative effect of techno-utopias can be studied in so-called makerspaces. In these shared machine shops, diverse publics are encouraged to join the maker movement by experimenting with digital fabrication devices (like 3D printers) and use them for rapid prototyping or personalized fabrication. The diverse practices in makerspaces do not necessarily correspond to the utopias of desktop 3D printing. These utopias, however, might very well be an important reason to establish, join and sustain a makerspace. They also shape ideas what a makerspace might be in the first place – for example: a blueprint for a decentralized fabrication and innovation regime. On the one hand, utopian expectations are inscribed into infrastructures and machines. On the other hand, utopias offer the possibility to read these machines and infrastructures as prototypes for a not yet realized future.

The new media ecology of the Internet enables utopias to travel fast and easy. In the case of 3D printing, not only ideas about the future traveled through the digital realm, but also instructions to realize this future, for example blueprints for assembling 3D printers and videos that teach how to use them.

Once decontextualized, utopian narratives of a specific technology can easily be linked to other techno-utopias. In the writings of Kurzweil for example, visions of genetic engineering, molecular nanotechnology and artificial intelligence are tied together into an overarching narrative of accelerating change and an impending technological ‘singularity’ (Kurzweil 2005). 3D printing can be integrated into those narratives. Neil Gershenfeld (2012), for example, suggests that today’s 3D printers are predecessors of nano-assemblers. And obviously, utopian narratives can also be turned upside down and transformed in dystopias due to medialization and decontextualization. In the case of 3D printing, fears of blueprint piracy and 3D printed weapons accompany visions of democratized production and hopes for emancipation – which highlights the inherent ambivalence of new technologies and their societal repercussions.

A challenge for RI

How should the RI community deal with these visionary discourses? Nordmann advises reflexive researchers to resist the lure of speculative scenarios and to escape ‘the pressure cooker of a technovisionary discourse’ (Nordmann 2014, 95, Fn. 1). He claims that we gain no substantial knowledge in reflecting the radical futures imagined in techno-utopian narratives. Hence, from his point of view, ‘these postulated, half-formed, non-trivial futures […] can easily be excluded from TA of emerging technologies’ (Nordmann 2014, 90).

We agree with Nordmann’s assertion that utopian visions should not be treated as outright anticipations of a future world. However, these discourses could hardly be ignored by and excluded from technology assessment and related fields: In medialized innovation societies (Rödder, Franzen, and Weingart 2012), techno-utopias are unlikely to disappear. They will rather continue to influence public innovation discourses and may serve as a basis of orientation and legitimization in individual and collective decision-making processes and are even materialized into and staged as prototypes of a social-technical alternative to the status quo (Suchman, Trigg, and Blomberg 2002; Wilie 2010). In her reply to Nordmann, Selin, therefore, urges the RI community to use the insights of futures studies and foresight, future-oriented epistemic practices which were so far ignored in academic circles (Selin 2014, 104). Instead of using foresight knowledge to address unknown futures, as Selin suggests, we might also adopt a more hermeneutic approach to techno-utopias (Grunwald 2014). Hence, an analysis of futures would be turned into an analysis of the performative power of speculative fictional narratives. But what exactly is the promise of such a hermeneutic analysis for RI? We suggest that a hermeneutic analysis of techno-utopias might offer reflexive knowledge about new configurations of responsibility and innovation themselves.

We once again turn to desktop 3D printing to illustrate this: This techno-utopian narrative shifts responsibility for innovation and production from industrial producers to consumers, thereby turning them into ‘prosumers’ (Ritzer and Jurgenson 2010). The utopian rhetoric of individual emancipation through ownership of the (new) means of production (Boyer 2004) also implies an integration of citizens into an expanded innovation regime. As technologically equipped ‘makers’, citizens are expected to contribute to innovative products and sustainable solutions by an individual or collaborative use of 3D printing – and this core expectation, which shapes accompanying sociocultural, socioeconomic and sociopolitical processes, ultimately results in an increasing responsibilization of individual citizens and technology users for (co-)production, invention and innovation.³

The case of 3D printing utopias thus shows what kind of insights the hermeneutic approach offers for questions of RI: It can reveal, how responsibility gets redistributed in utopian visions, who is responsibilized for the invention and application of technologies and their consequences, and who may claim responsibility to speak and act in the ‘name’ of the future. Hence, an important lesson can be learned from desktop 3D printing: In the context of the new media ecology, it is no longer sufficient to analyze the visions and expectations of traditional actors of innovation (states, big companies, universities). In the contemporary renaissance of techno-utopianism, radical futures might also be narrated, performed and materialized by makers and hackers, citizens and activists, who take responsibility for shaping the future.

Notes on contributors

Sascha Dickel is a Senior Researcher at the Friedrich Schiedel Chair for Sociology of Science, Technical University Munich (Germany).

Jan-Felix Schrape is Senior Researcher at the Department of Organizational Sociology and Innovation Studies, Stuttgart University (Germany).

ORCID

Sascha Dickel http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3620-2934

Notes

1. The concept of techno-utopianism is related to other concepts in technology assessment and science and technology studies. In the context of this short paper, we can hardly do justice to these family resemblances. Techno-utopias are first and foremost related to Grunwald’s (2014) concept of visionary ‘techno-futures’. These futures are ‘decades away, and exhibit revolutionary features in terms of technology and of culture, human behavior, and individual and social issues’ (Grunwald 2014, 285). At least all far-ranging techno-utopias are visionary techno-futures. It is, however, an empirical question, if all techno-futures share the narrative patterns that we reconstructed in our research. This can also be said regarding the concept of ‘socio-technical imaginaries’ (Jasanoff and Kim 2009), which is primarily used to make sense of national innovation politics.

2. The three dimensions (ontology, temporality, sociality) emphasized here are inspired by Luhmann’s dimensions of meaning in communication (Luhmann 2013, 335–345).

3. This responsibilization of citizens might indeed be a major feature of all utopias that focus on the democratizing effects of digital technologies (Dickel 2016).