Futures of ageing and technology – comparing different actors’ prospective views

ABSTRACT

Ambient and assistive technologies (AT) have the potential to increase individual autonomy, social participation and quality of life for ageing populations. In seeking to implement these technologies, national and supranational funding schemes have strongly supported primarily market-driven research activities. This means that other societally relevant aspects, such as specific social and cultural contexts, are likely to be underestimated if not neglected. In view of the development of RI, this would be a serious misconception. We examine three recent participatory forward-looking technology assessment studies that involved experts, stakeholders and laypersons in discussions about the future of ageing and AT, and identify the diverse futures they imagine. We show different ways an ageing society of the future can be pictured, and contribute to the discourse on European demographic change as a Grand Challenge. In the light of RI, this diversity of imagined futures underlines the finding that answers to societal challenges connected to an ageing population cannot only be found by means of technological solutions, societal aspects will also play an important role.

KEYWORDS:

• Participatory TA
• socio-technical imaginaries
• ambient assistive technologies
• ageing societies
• responsible research and innovation
• forward-looking methods

1. Introduction

The phenomenon of an ageing population is global. According to the UN Report on World Population Ageing (2015), this will lead to a significant social transformation in the current century. One response to this challenge is to simply foster research and development on technologies for older adults. For instance, the European Union has supported a significant amount of research activity on ambient active living¹ (AAL) and assistive technologies (ATs) in the last decade through the AAL Joint Programme Initiative (AAL-JP). Co-financed by the European Commission, the AAL-JP was introduced in 2008 with the aim of improving synergies between national research activities and EU-wide research activities. In 2014, the Commission extended its co-financing activities for the AAL-JP under the Horizon 2020 framework programme for the 2014–2020 period.² Although participatory approaches that emphasize the societal aspects of research and development are gaining in importance in the European AAL framework, national and supranational funding schemes for AAL have tended to strongly support primarily market-driven research activities on AAL. This means that other societally relevant aspects, such as specific social and cultural contexts, are likely to be underestimated if not neglected (Gudowsky et al. 2012; Peine et al. 2015). Funding agencies often see technological innovation as an adequate means for coping with demographic change. For the AAL-JP, technologies are seen as a central instrument for addressing this challenge in the future:

In our vision, business innovation and the application of technology-based solutions will enable people to live their lives to the fullest, where and how they choose. (AAL Programme 2014, 3)

The strong focus on technical innovations, without any reference to social and organizational aspects that can help shape future outcomes or to technology assessment (TA) practices that can extend the scope of research projects in this regard (see also Decker and Weinberger 2017), raises the suspicion of an underlying technology push and therefore, perhaps, an underrepresentation of perspectives that are not market-oriented. These societal aspects need to be considered in the development process of ATs if the tools and innovations developed are to truly assist and help their users. This is underlined by the claim that ATs have the potential to increase individual autonomy and social participation and to improve the quality of life (Bechtold and Sotoudeh 2013). A human-oriented approach (cf. Richardson et al. 1993), even though it is not always a reality in projects, was stressed from the beginning of AAL in Europe by what was known as the mission orientation, which required research to address and tackle vital societal problems and needs (Sanders et al. 2012; Compagna and Kohlbacher 2015). More recently, this has also been emphasized by RI, which is seen as an anticipatory approach designed to ‘ensure that societal actors work together during the whole research and innovation process to better align the process and outcomes of R&I with values, needs and expectations of European society’ (EC 2013). As RI originated from TA practices amongst others (von Schomberg 2013), this is clearly in line with the criteria of participatory technology development as put forward by constructive TA – anticipation, reflexivity and social learning (Schot 2001).

Scientists and experts who deal with the ageing society necessarily focus on different aspects such as demographic change (e.g. Scherbov, Lutz and Sanderson 2011), health and care needs and services (e.g. Schneider et al. 2013; Franco et al. 2014) and future social and health costs (e.g. Felder, Meier, and Schmitt 2000; Felder and Andreas 2008; Gregersen 2014). AAL may serve either as a starting point (Augusto et al. 2012) or as one aspect among others. Scientists and experts make certain assumptions in their work and through their research projects, and hence actively contribute to the framing of the topic. Moreover, they do so not only as experts but also as persons holding certain values and beliefs. This may impact the assumed determinants of examination: some aspects will be seen from economic or legal angles, while others are analysed primarily in terms of ethical or social issues. These framings may become especially evident when prospective methods of investigation are used, or when different actors imagine possible or desirable futures within visioning or scenario-building exercises that are often applied in early stages of technology development (Gudowsky and Sotoudeh 2017; Sand and Schneider 2017). The framings may also differ depending on the type of actor (expert, layperson or stakeholder) who undergoes the visioning or scenario-building exercise. Altogether, the essentials of such a socio-technical futures discourse are its reference to the future itself, to technology and also to feasibility and desirability (Böhle and Bopp 2014). If they are close to ongoing technical developments, such prospects may serve as a Leitbild for political and public debates on short- or medium-term developments (Dierkes, Hoffmann, and März 1992, 1996). If they are more open and speculative, incorporating longer time horizons and utopian as well as feasible aspects, such imagined futures may serve as guiding visions for medium- and long-term developments. They can serve to inspire and motivate actors towards facilitating change (Shipley and Michela 2002), for instance, by influencing expectations and beliefs (van Lente 1993; Sand 2016).

The promises and expectations associated with AAL discourse embrace economic benefits (for industries and social health systems) as well as social benefits (for the persons giving and those receiving care and support; Neven 2015). However, not only do AAL discourses overlook the importance of societal aspects, they also overlook the role of imaginaries in shaping future outcomes. There is a long tradition of applying futures as a reliable framework for deriving policy advice (Tran and Daim 2008; Burgelman, Chloupková, and Wobbe 2014; Cagnin, Johnston, and Giesecke 2015). However, a diversity of futures can be both an advantage and a challenge: it increases robustness, but if futures are highly divergent they can become contested and thereby block collective action (Blok 2014). While contested futures can provide the opportunity to derive knowledge about the present rather than the future (Grunwald 2014), efforts aimed at responsible innovation aspire for more reflexive approaches to ‘handle contingency, that can expect the unexpected and do not fall for the false promises or the illusion of intellectual and technical control’ (Nordmann 2014, 109) and that require ‘the adequate and timely inclusion of public values relevant to technological development’ (Taebi et al. 2014, 118). Thus, while RI scholars and TA practitioners see the multi-level added value of ambient technologies as a way of tackling the grand challenge of demographic change, the way different actors imagine grand challenges is itself a ‘grand challenge’ that can stifle effective stakeholder dialogue (Blok 2014). In response to the need to include societal aspects and the related challenges presented by a diversity of futures, this paper provides evidence about the ways in which promises and expectations become real (Gilhooly, Gilhooly, and Jones 2009; Neven 2015) and how socio-technical imaginaries come into existence. Imagined futures have many different purposes: exploration, knowledge generation, communication, decision-making, strategy building and boundary objects between different actors. Therefore, it is important to take a closer look at socio-technical imaginaries, to question what they are made of and to see in what ways they prescribe a future that may only seem attainable to those involved in creating them (Jasanoff and Kim 2009). Expert-centred approaches, for instance, may only reproduce a certain kind of narrow and often one-sided knowledge (e.g. Pfeiffer 2017), and shaping alternative futures may then become more difficult. Here, engaging multiple actor groups for identifying socially robust knowledge is a prerequisite for elaborating diverse and thus robust futures (Gudowsky and Sotoudeh 2017). Such knowledge may be produced by the wide distribution of expertise and linking it with other forms of knowledge, testing it in the real world and constantly challenging, expanding and modifying it (Nowotny, Scott, and Gibbons 2001).

1.1. Aim of this article

The overall aim of this paper is to identify and compare different actors’ imagined futures to gain an understanding of what more robust anticipatory knowledge might look like in the area of AAL. In order to do this, we compare the imagined futures of three types of actors: experts (persons who come from a scientific knowledge and research context – they can but do not necessarily have to have a certain stake), stakeholders (representatives of societal, political and economic entities with a distinctive status in the field) and citizens (laypersons, who do not belong to either of the other groups). We derive these different futures from three different participatory forward-looking technology assessment (pTA) studies³ (see also Table 1). These studies employ comparable methodological approaches but involve different actors: in Value Ageing (VA), experts sketch scenarios; in Parliaments and Civil society in Technology Assessment (PACITA), it is stakeholders and in Citizens Visions on Science, Technology and Innovation – Ambient Assisted Living (CIVISTI), it is laypersons who develop visions of the future. All three studies make use of participatory forward-looking methods in order to provide input to the current discourse on ageing societies within complex socio-technical constellations in the form of different types and levels of policy advice.⁴

Table 1. Overview of the actors (in three pTA projects): experts, stakeholders and experts and citizens.

Actor	pTA output chosen for comparison	Scope	Project name, duration and sponsor	Primary Addressee
Experts	Scenarios	Values in science and innovation: bridge gap between science and industry	Value Ageing (VA) 2010–2014 European FP7 –Marie Curie	Industry and policy
Stakeholders and Experts	Scenarios	Future ageing: Participatory co-creation of recommendations	Parliaments and civil society in Technology Assessment (PACITA) 2011–2015 European FP7 –Science in society	National and EU policy
Citizens	Visions	Autonomous living and ageing in the city: Participatory co-creation of recommendations	Citizens Visions on Science Technology and Innovation – Ambient Assisted Living (CIVISTI) 2013–2014 Technology Agency of the City of Vienna, Austria (ZIT)	Regional policy, city planning

In this article, we ask how the imagined futures of different actor groups compare with one another in terms of general framings, time framing, world making, role of technology, social cohesion, self-determination, care provision, privacy and similar aspects. Using an exploratory approach, we identify differences and commonalities with regard to which aspects are highlighted or ignored in the different futures. These questions serve to understand how different imagined futures could be combined (in pTA, for policy, etc.) for the sake of generating more robust anticipatory knowledge. We hope to derive a more holistic picture of future technology use in an ageing society than is currently in play, in order to broaden the (political) debate on ageing and technologies. Our approach has its limitations, mostly because actors used different methods to generate the futures we compare and because we are unable to deduce which actor group is prone or most apt to deal with certain questions. Yet, in the light of the holistic picture we aim to draw, these are not insurmountable deficiencies.

The article is structured as follows. In Section 2, we describe our comparative method and the way we proceeded when exploring the different futures. In Section 3, we present results with regard to differences and commonalities, followed by a discussion of the results in Section 4. Finally, Section 5 contains the conclusions with regard to a holistic picture of the future of ageing in socio-technical environments.

2. Different actor groups – different prospects

Future imaginaries may contribute knowledge for orientation and facilitate knowledge-based decisions (Kosow and Gaßner 2008), especially when the stakes are high. In the context of AAL, these stakes are potential loss of autonomy, loss of privacy and increased social isolation on an individual level. We examine and compare the products of two foresight methods, scenarios and visions, in order to elucidate future imaginaries and to get a sense of the risks that societal and financial investments in AAL may therefore face. Scenarios are an appropriate tool for participatory exploration of futures since they ‘are not developed in a temporal void or an imagined future but crafted by someone, at some time, for some purpose, and for some present use’ (Selin 2014, 104ff). A scenario is an internally consistent, complex image of the future. Scenarios are not predictions, but a possibility of how the future might look (Porter 1985). Different development opportunities with many interlinked factors may potentially lead to a high level of complexity in the scenarios (Gausemeier, Fink, and Schlake 1996), making scenario analysis a widely used method in TA practices (Tran and Daim 2008).

Distinctions between scenarios and visions are far from consistent (Jakubik 2007). A distinction is often drawn between tacit and explicit knowledge (Nonaka 1994), but this is only partly useful as a way of distinguishing between the knowledge different actor groups exhibit. In this contribution, we additionally use Glicken's (2000) distinction between three qualities: cognitive, experiential and value-based knowledge. Cognitive knowledge derives from individual expertise, whereas experiential knowledge is based on common sense and personal experience. Value-based knowledge is moral or normative, and emerges from societies (cf. Nowotny, Scott, and Gibbons 2001). Within the pTA studies discussed, scenarios are based on cognitive knowledge and on current socio-political, technological and/or economic trends. They seek to identify possible self-consistent paths of development, which distinguishes them from classical prognoses. Visions, on the other hand, are based upon laypersons’ experiential knowledge. Here, laypeople are in charge of defining what a desirable future may look like. Due to group work and the deliberative setting in the CIVISTI project, value-based knowledge plays an even greater role during the development of these visions. In view of this factor, engaging different actors to elicit their knowledge again shows the importance of delimiting clear roles and duties for these groups in engagement processes (cf. Kahane et al. 2013), and bringing together different perspectives may serve to create new knowledge (Dierkes et al. 2003).

Involving different actors in anticipatory assessments also has different implications in terms of project design and intended impact. For instance, participants may be more or less informed, deliberative spaces may be more or less structured and regulated and the process may be more or less open. As mentioned above, the involvement of different actor groups tends to produce different types of knowledge, along with different types of impacts. A participatory project may also start with the necessity of involving certain actors. This may be the case if relevant addressees who are interested in the result see a certain group of actors as an asset. Moreover, the topic itself (e.g. the degree of newness) and the kind of insights that should be uncovered (values, knowledge or interests) can define the actors (Nentwich et al. 2006).

2.1. Method of comparison

Policy discourse on the major challenges of demographic change in the coming years tends to focus on the future of ageing as a central problem, using phrases such as ‘ageing Europe’ and identifying problems such as a ‘lack in care personnel’ and ‘difficulties in financing the baby boomers who start to retire’ (Gerstenberger 2014; cf. Schofield et al. 2006; Davoudi, Wishardt, and Strange 2010; Levy et al. 2014; Shergold, Lyons, and Hubers 2015; Sargent-Cox 2017). Meanwhile, the discourse implies that technology alone will be able to alleviate expected burdens (cf. van Bronswijk et al. 2009; Neven 2015; Bechtold, Waibel, and Sotoudeh 2016). Our effort is to examine the future imaginaries of different actors and provide a contribution towards a more inclusive, holistic view.

In the following, we will refer to three pTA projects by naming the actors they deployed (experts in VA, stakeholders and experts in PACITA and citizens in CIVISTI). The scenarios (VA, PACITA) are on a comparable level regarding scope and aim: the content is wrapped in user stories, whereby the users encounter concrete technological applications (see Table 2). CIVISTI-AAL used visions created by citizens instead of scenarios. These visions of this project are examined and compared to the two scenario products of the VA and PACITA projects. The scenarios of these two projects are sometimes referred to as ‘ethical entanglements’ (VA) and ‘policy recommendations’ (PACITA). Both the visions (CIVISTI) and the scenarios are formulated in a strongly normative way, and all three provide policy guidance.

Table 2. VA/PACITA – comparison of important elements of scenarios.

Scenario element	Comparative remarks
Time framing	VA scenarios extend up until 2030, whereas PACITA scenarios cover the period until 2025. A consequence of this is a technology approach which is slightly more futuristic in VA – not all the technology described exists in that form today.
Closeness to actors’ everyday life	VA is more situational – the scenarios cover a special situation, and the protagonists face a change in the situation. In PACITA the actors are described during (subjectively) longer periods of time – there are no special situations in which their stories are told. One could even say that PACITA deploys a meta-perspective.
Introduction to scenarios	In PACITA a general description of the protagonists’ situation and an introduction to each scenario’s political and social context is given. VA wraps all information into the 12 different stories.
Main aim	The main aim of the PACITA scenarios is an identification of political measures which help to tackle the challenge of an ageing society – it is about rational and knowledge-based policy advice. It is also about analysing the societal consequences of political decisions in relation to technology use. The main aim of VA scenarios is to analyse specific situations of technology use, in situations where the technology involved is already integrated into the protagonists’ lives.
World making	Generally rather positive in PACITA (e.g. ‘the common action scenario’), and variable in VA (quite a number of scenarios – 5 out of 12 – are about countering crime, fraud and misuse).
Technology failure	An important topic in VA, but only a consequence of economic shortages in PACITA.
Technology to market	PACITA addresses the political decisions affecting the market, and political and/or economic incentives are part of the scenarios; the process of how the technologies become part of the protagonists’ lives is thus central. In VA the technology is already implemented – hence the analysis starts a little later here.
Individual and societal perspective	PACITA distinguishes a grand societal framing from the individual dealing with the societal issues and the technological challenges; VA mixes both aspects within each scenario anew.
Intelligent technology	VA addresses monetary aspects (social-economic) to gratify reasonable behaviour – individuals are steered towards desirable traits and technology realizes ambient law in form of ‘drive lock’, which disqualifies human beings from deciding whether they are able to drive or not. The aspect of technology influencing users’ behaviour is not present in PACITA directly, but indirectly this aspect is also present in terms of feedback functions of health apps or (tele)medical devices.
Needs of the protagonists	Their needs are quite similar in VA and PACITA – the needs of human beings seem to change only slowly over time.
Technology affinity of protagonists	VA – there are almost no protagonists who are technology nerds; similarly, in PACITA.

A first step serves to highlight general differences and parallels in the approach and scenario layout (see Table 2). The comparison of the scenarios identifies main aspects (see Table 3). This includes, for example, societal, spatial and/or technological aspects or describes degrees of abstraction, for example, if the vision takes place on a meta-level or if a practical situation plays an important role. Furthermore, we can see here which problems are directly or indirectly mentioned in the vision. In the process, the following additional questions were used:

• Which main topics can be identified? Which concerns, hopes and wishes are inherent to these?

• Which aspects are relevant on an individual, societal and technical level?

Table 3. Main aspects as presented by citizens, experts and stakeholders.

Main aspect	Citizens (CIVISTI) visions	Experts (VA) Ethical entanglements scenario	Stakeholders (PACITA) recommendations scenario
Social cohesion	Intergenerational exchange to prevent isolation	Social Integration and Communication	Detection and recognition of individual needs
Self-determination	Fear of enforced community participation in public life	Autonomy	Autonomy and freedom of choice (non-technological solutions also have to be possible)
Care provision	Guaranteed public care provision	Public care provision is absent here. Partly inherent to: universal technological access options to public services	Guaranteed public care provision
Technology as societal disruptor	Communication technologies could reduce personal contact	Technology replaces human beings	Participation and inclusion
Demand side orientation	Customized living quarters and personal transport	Customizable technology features	Appropriate framework (legal, social, financial, technical, including the definition of norms and standards)
Provision of services/goods	Fear of top-down offers Customized health offers	Freedom of choice	Self-determination, autonomy and freedom of choice (non-technological solutions also have to be possible)
Active older adults	Meaningful and socially valued activities Fear of late retirement age Barrier-free living, mobility	Remain active	Change the public perception of elderly people
Security and privacy	Fear of perceived or real surveillance Strong social networks provide security	Personal security Informational privacy	Data privacy
Local privacy	Chosen isolation and anonymity needs to be possible	Local privacy	Provision of adequate and appropriate technologies
Digital divide	Fear of excluding technologically illiterate	Human dependence upon technology	is absent here
Technology accompanying services	Free tech updates	Responsibility of providers to ensure effective use and (continuous) training	Education/training and provision of information to caregivers and elderly people
Accessing technology	Easy access to technological innovations	Universal technological access options to public services	is absent here
Economic perspective	Social networks relieve state budget	Trade-off of economic savings vs. (individual) risk	is absent here

A thorough analysis of the citizens’ visions (CIVISTI) resulted in an initial set of aspects; following this, the experts’ and stakeholders’ imaginaries (VA, PACITA) were searched using these same aspects. In an additional step, the experts and stakeholders imaginaries (VA, PACITA) were analysed for any additional aspects that were not found in the citizens’ visions.

Subsequently, all aspects identified were assembled to provide a matrix for comparison of the contents. Building on this matrix, we present our findings on how the outcomes compare to one other, where potential analogies and/or divergences exist, and how the different actor groups depict ageing in the future.

The matrix serves to draw conclusions as to what the comparison may signify in the light of the different approaches as well as the different actors. We aim to provide insights about how socially robust imaginaries and anticipatory knowledge can be created (or not). In the following section, we will describe the three projects, the material used for the analysis and how that material was generated.

2.2. Experts: VA

The Value Ageing (VA) project⁵ aimed to strengthen cooperation between research and industry and the integration of the EU’s fundamental values in the development of ATs or AAL in general. The overall objective of the project was to develop guidelines for the design of ATs for older adults, in line with fundamental European values.

The part of the project we refer to here is the scenario analysis (Bechtold and Tingas 2012) and the lessons learned from the expert analysis of 12 scenarios from VA. The scenarios are 12 distinct short stories with changing characters who face certain challenges. The main objective of the scenario analysis by Bechtold and Tingas 2012 was the identification of social, ethical and fundamental rights issues which arise in the context of the use of AT in the fields of identification technologies, wireless technologies and augmentation technologies. They have a temporal horizon of 2030 and were formulated by an expert and evaluated by eight experts from different fields (ethics, robotics, architecture, gerontology, philosophy, engineering, universal design, media) in relation to the categories of plausibility, robustness, diversity, consistency, decision-making utility and challenge, mostly following Wisdon (Mantovani 2012, 64). These experts also checked the scenarios for significance of scenario and areas of impact, for the value of the scenario for different stakeholder groups, and for the atmosphere (pessimistic, neutral or optimistic). The improved 12 scenarios⁶ then served (in a qualitative and quantitative step by step analysis) to identify 14 main ethical challenges which arise from the use of AT (cf. Bechtold and Tingas 2012). These are ethical challenges that users face when confronted with AAL in terms of identification, wireless and augmentation technologies for older adults.

2.3. Stakeholders and experts: PACITA

PACITA’s main aim was to increase the capacity of and enhance the institutional foundation for knowledge-based policy-making by means of Parliamentary Technology Assessment. The key aspect of the PACITA project was the engagement and involvement of civil society organizations, stakeholders, citizens, parliaments and governments. This was exemplified and accomplished by three cross-European case studies.⁷ In this article, we focus on one of these case studies, which was devoted to challenges an ageing society poses and the role of technology when addressing these challenges.

We refer to the scenarios, which were co-created by experts and relevant stakeholders (i.e. technology developers, researchers and practitioners in the fields of technology, geriatricians, medical personnel, professional care providers). In the creation of the scenarios, the stakeholders had the opportunity to provide input for the scenarios based on their specific knowledge. In the end, three scenarios were developed, based on two main questions:

• Will future health care provision be private or public?

• How will the citizens and society organize themselves in order to meet the need for care?

The scenarios served as a starting point for scenario workshops⁸ in 10 EU countries, in which 340 stakeholders from different professions were invited to (1) discuss the scenarios’ pros and cons and (2) develop alternative futures and recommendations for future care settings. The scenarios consist of narrative user stories of four persons with different care demands and needs. Through the personal user stories, the scenarios depict which pros and cons the specific scenario has for the individuals. Therefore, the scenarios provoke a reflection on the political and societal decisions which were taken to construct the respective scenario. Based on this reflection process, recommendations and alternative futures were created by the stakeholders during the scenario workshop. In our analysis, we use the results of the Austrian scenario workshop (Capari and Sotoudeh 2014).

2.4. Citizens: CIVISTI

CIVISTI aimed to identify relevant areas of action for research and policy in the field of ambient assisted living⁹ by applying the CIVISTI method, a multi-actor approach that

is based upon the idea that the process of defining relevant and forward-looking research and innovation agendas could, in many respects, be improved by including consultations with citizens in their development. The method uses citizens’ concerns about societal development as a stepping stone for developing priorities in research programs. (Engage2020 2015)

For the case study in the local context of the city of Vienna, almost 50 Viennese citizens created visions for an independent life in old age with a time horizon of 2050 in a two-day workshop based on the standardized method CIVISTI (civisti.org, Gudowsky et al. 2012). The method involves several rounds of brainstorming, group discussions and feedback, and uses questions such as ‘How do we want to live in the future in old age? What support do we need at home? What should our surroundings look or be like?’ At the end of the first day, participants voted for the top 10 out of 25 visions, which were then edited and finished in group work on the second day. The development of the visions followed a given structure. A template contained questions to support the creative work, for example, ‘What is the core message?’, ‘What are the benefits and advantages?’ or ‘What might the negative consequences be?’ The 10 visions are not stories with characters acting, but describe social, political, ethical circumstances and challenges which seem relevant if we want to picture a desirable future (Gudowsky et al. 2017).

3. Results

This section presents the imagined futures of experts, stakeholders and citizens, which are put into context and presented according to their differences and similarities. The section includes a descriptive comparison of the VA and PACITA scenarios (see Table 2), followed by a comparison of the scenario products (see Table 3).

Exploring the two scenarios, which are our data material, the starting point of most expert scenarios (VA) is the individual, whereas stakeholders (PACITA) focus on both societal framework conditions and individual consequences. However, these two levels interact in many scenarios coined by both, experts and stakeholders.

This section summarizes the comparison of the main aspects within the scenario products generated by the different actors. One interesting observation relates to the partly different layers of one and the same aspect the three actor groups address. This is illustrated regarding ‘security and privacy’ as presented before, where one can see that citizens address privacy from the perspective of concern, that is, of being surveilled. The other two actor groups address the topic from a more distanced perspective, asking questions about the prerequisites for a ‘good’ care arrangement when technologies are used.

Another interesting issue, because it is very similar for all three actor groups, concerns the aspect of technology training and education, where citizens call for constant technological updates by specific technology trainers. This is very similar to a recommendation in the PACITA project, where the stakeholders also proposed a specific occupational group who would train people in the correct use of technology. In VA, this aspect is even more clearly specified, as it is seen to be the responsibility of technology providers to ensure effective use and training.

Looking at general differences and similarities between the scenario products, which consist of visions (CIVISTI), the ethical entanglements scenario (VA) and the recommendations scenario (PACITA), a few key points become evident, which are essential for drawing a holistic picture of how different actors see the future of ageing. Local privacy, for instance, is an important value in VA and addressed in the visions (CIVISTI) as chosen isolation, but not addressed in PACITA. Regulating accessibility through technology is discussed as easy access (CIVISTI) and universal access (VA), but is not addressed in PACITA – here access issues relate to access to care. There are very different economic foci, for instance, the topic of (questioning) the weighing of individual behaviour (and risks) against state budget savings is present in the visions of CIVISTI and the ethical entanglements of VA, but is not a topic in PACITA.

The health system is not addressed as a topic in the ethical entanglements (VA), but it is present in the other two projects. Another difference is the absence of technology transfer and social outreach in terms of that certain technological applications which are planned for a certain demographics may be transferred to other demographics – this aspect and the connected risk of unsuitability is mentioned in VA only.

A fundamental difference between the scenarios (VA, PACITA) and the visions (CIVISTI) is the overall presence of technology. The scenarios of VA are based upon in-depth expert research related to technological developments and societal trends. This results in a clear presence of technology in the scenarios. For the citizens (CIVISTI), no specific technologies, technological solutions or approaches are broached. It is more about a broad coverage of already existing technologies and how to ensure interoperability and technological communication. Stakeholders (PACITA) mention technical innovations, whether telemedical, telecare or AAL devices in a broader sense, and they are just one part of the puzzle for coping with the challenges of demographic change. However, the stakeholders agreed that technology (e.g. for care) can only serve as support and not as a substitute for human support (e.g. professional care). The stakeholders (PACITA) make the scenarios more policy-oriented and there were no clearly defined fields of technology.

In terms of the content, citizens (CIVISTI) strongly emphasize that the good life and spatial requirements for new forms of living (e.g. the need for innovative meeting places) are important, and these issues are addressed in the majority of visions.

In this context (technology replaces human being), the stakeholders (PACITA) took the perspective of medical care providers, whose current occupation would be potentially threatened by an intensified usage of ATs. In contrast to this reading, citizens (CIVISTI) and experts (VA) strongly emphasized inclusive aspects, for example, that technology (applications) should be planned in ways that would not exclude those who are not easily able (because of a lack of skills or economic power) or willing (individual conviction) to use technology for elementary services (e.g. there still needs to be a booth to buy railway tickets).

The scenarios diverge strongly as sketched by stakeholders in PACITA (optimistic) as opposed to the experts in VA (pessimistic).

Citizens have clear ideas about intergenerational exchange and social inclusion aspects dominate. In general, the visions are formulated quite normatively, which is in line with the project design. Classical issues of ageing (such as care, autonomy or dignity) are explicitly discussed by the PACITA stakeholders and the VA experts and more implicitly present in the visions (CIVISTI). However, local privacy is mentioned in the citizens’ forum and by the experts, but not by the stakeholders, whereas data privacy is mentioned by experts (VA) and stakeholders only.

In the recommendations, the PACITA stakeholders emphasize the need for an improved public image of care and the recognition of the value of informal care. This is not tackled by the experts in VA. Citizens take the view that it is important to flatten hierarchies as a precondition for informal care, so that relatives have the courage to take responsibility for care aspects. In all three groups, the idea of a service-oriented welfare state is dominant.

In the visions, health is seen as a commodity which can be improved proactively as well as maintained (prevention, campaigns, etc.). The visions emphasize the importance of a personal meeting place as a precondition for intergenerational and intercultural exchange and thus for individual integration. Unlike the PACITA stakeholders, the citizens think it is important to devise adequate working models for the aged. The topics of improving societal perception of the aged and an ageing society highlight some differences. Here, the citizens are quite normative and the question of ‘how to improve the individual and society’ is very much present in the visions. The stakeholders in PACITA thematize this more general and refer to a societal sensitization for the topic of ageing. The expert approach (VA scenarios) is similar and includes a call for a new and inclusive culture of ageing.

One controversial issue is whether individual behaviour (and risks) should be weighed against its consequences for state budgets. This is important for the citizens and the experts, but is not a topic for the PACITA stakeholders.

4. Discussion

Visions in CIVISTI provide considerable robustness in relation to social aspects, because their development was centred on actors and not technology. Moreover, 50 persons developed the visions, whereas a single expert wrote the scenarios. Therefore, visions mostly address social issues that are already of importance today and/or their improvement is perceived to be desirable in the future. Technology is not the main concern in the visions. Nordmann (2014) emphasizes that anticipation should serve to define normative aspects for the future. Normative aspects of the futures can be found in the results of all three projects. The main difference is how these normative aspects are identified by the three actor groups. Citizens were given the assignment to think of a desirable future, whereas the stakeholders and experts followed a framework, which in its preconception was already designed to identify normative aspects.

These requirements are not mentioned explicitly by stakeholders in PACITA or the experts in VA. For the citizens, the isolation of elderly or ‘other’ persons is an important issue, and many visions address social integration and participation as a high priority – this is also connected to physical accessibility. Stakeholders in PACITA or the experts in VA also touch upon these aspects in more than one scenario, as well as the scenario products. The fact that all three actor groups identify the issue of loneliness as an area where action is needed shows that there seems to be a common understanding of the underlying problem of loneliness and isolation, which seems to be independent of the level of expertise or methodological approach. This is interesting, as loneliness is often underestimated as a problem (e.g. Nicholson 2012; Valtorta and Hanratty 2012).

Another similarity in all three studies is the view that technology should not negatively influence interpersonal relationships. This also includes the replacement of human assistance (help from other people) by assistive technologies. It remains unclear what they may mean in the light of social involvement as well as interpersonal and social skills (Mollenkopf 2004).

The scenarios diverge strongly as sketched by stakeholders in PACITA (optimistic) as opposed to the experts in VA (pessimistic). In terms of technology failure (strongly present in VA) and ambient intelligence, Hildebrandt (2008) asks whether objects may be assumed to bear legal responsibility. Analysing robots as legal agents, Pagallo (2011) distinguishes a moral (how do we program and use the machines) from a legal responsibility (human beings’ responsibility for the machines’ actions and the danger that these may gain momentum and develop in unintended ways). Broadbent et al. (2013) propose new patterns of distribution of responsibility between the collective and the individual. Another important aspect here is a shift towards the ability of the individual to decide what he/she needs, wants or rejects (cf. McLean 2011). Katz and Marshall (2003, 12) emphasize the need to consider (and respect) those individuals who refuse to be empowered by technologies. This aspect was also stressed by the stakeholders within the PACITA recommendations: the obligatory application of ATs in care arrangements should never be the aim, as this procedure would be paternalistic in relation to older adults and would deprive them of the right to decide for themselves.

Our analysis shows that actors emphasize different aspects of future ageing and therefore see different challenges: where experts emphasize technological solutions, citizens and stakeholders may be more concerned with the economic accessibility of those solutions and of healthcare services in general. Stakeholders, for example, may raise concerns that represent the stakes of a certain group (e.g. technology replaces nurses). Overall, the diversity of the picture underpins the argument that robust decisions need to incorporate knowledge from all the actors involved (Nowotny, Scott, and Gibbons 2001) while also highlighting the challenge of integrating diverse futures and of aligning the actors who imagine them. The involvement of multiple actors has the potential to illuminate multiple layers of one and the same issue. Comparing how the three different actor groups (experts, stakeholders and citizens) depict ageing in the future allows us to identify new fields of action for implementing a desirable future. Experts tend to focus on classical topics connected to ageing (e.g. dignity, autonomy, needs, care), stakeholders tend to bring in their field of engagement (e.g. legal aspects, health care), and citizens as laypersons show a clear ‘improvement perspective’ on the individual as well as the society (they clearly focus on normative issues such as better together, more respect, conditions for interaction, etc.). For example, in terms of care, stakeholders want informal care to be improved and valued. Citizens start from quite a different angle: they think that the conditions have to be improved so that relatives feel capable of taking on the role of caregivers at all. Experts incorporate numerous technical features and problematize the effects this may have upon human social relations.

In other words, experts seem to approach the topic from a problem-oriented (VA scenarios) and from a moral perspective (ethical entanglements). The project design or methodology itself would not have led us to expect this view, since the experts were not encouraged to adopt these perspectives. On the other hand, the moral view of the visions is surely determined by the method design of CIVISTI, as citizens were explicitly instructed to provide a normative view. Therefore, they approach some topics in a more value-based way than the stakeholders. Citizens merely implicitly considered conventional topics relevant to an ageing society (access, autonomy, care, privacy, etc.), and it seems quite coincidental when they arise; it may be that the timeframe of 2050, as well as the task of being asked to imagine a desirable future, produces an assumption that all these challenges have already been solved. The stakeholders, however, have a different perception, namely that these topics have to be discussed one by one. The same can be said for the expert scenarios, which also aim to cover the most likely challenges.

As the citizens tend to exclude the more challenging topics of autonomy, care, assisted suicide, etc., it seems an interesting question to ask whether laypeople’s visions alone may prove to be too open for the discussion of concrete societal challenges if problematic facets may be omitted. One way to deal with this could be a setting where citizens are asked to rank and evaluate experts’ visions. Yet, within the CIVISTI method, the collective visioning is only a starting point for a larger process that integrates citizens’, experts’ and stakeholders’ knowledge. Within this setting, it is not the citizens’ duty to provide solutions to challenges currently perceived as very important. Collective visioning aims here at eliciting social needs and demands and establishing a landmark to provide orientation for long-term planning, which may prove a useful approach to realizing the aspirations of RRI noted earlier on.

The question of sustainable resource use is quite important to the citizens, but does not arise with the stakeholders (e.g. energy-efficient technologies, renewable resources, passive housing, e-mobility, car-sharing, beaming, local organic food, etc.). Experts include car-sharing as the only feature of the aforementioned examples. This, and the general approach citizens choose when imagining ageing in the future, suggests that they have a broader picture in mind than stakeholders or experts. The latter seem to approach the challenges of ageing with today’s knowledge (also including knowledge about which technology does not work) and imagine what they will be like in the future. The example of privacy suggests that stakeholders are most likely to contribute and discuss those issues that are relevant within their own work, in which case it may prove difficult to broaden their horizons.

5. Conclusions: towards a different or a holistic picture of the future of ageing

The involvement of multiple actors has the potential to illuminate multiple layers of one and the same issue. Comparing how different actor groups – here, experts, stakeholders and citizens – depict ageing in the future allows us to identify new fields of action for implementing a desirable future. Summarizing our findings, we draw a holistic picture of the future of ageing as depicted by the three actor groups.

The fact that all three actor groups identify the issue of loneliness as an area where action is needed shows that there seems to be a common understanding of the underlying problem of loneliness and isolation, which seems to be independent of the level of expertise or methodological approach. Another interesting similarity in all three studies is the view that technology should not negatively influence interpersonal relationships. Citizens and experts strongly emphasized inclusive aspects, for example, that technology should be planned in ways that would not exclude those who are not easily able or willing to use technology for elementary services. A need for societal sensitization is perceived important by all three actor groups for instance facilitating a new and inclusive culture of ageing. Citizens generally emphasize the necessity to improve the individual and society. Experts tend to focus on classical topics connected to ageing (e.g. dignity, autonomy, needs, care), stakeholders tend to bring in their field of engagement (e.g. legal aspects, health care) and citizens as laypersons show a clear ‘improvement perspective’, for example, focusing on normative issues such as better together, more respect, conditions for interaction, etc.). Experts emphasize technological solutions whereas laypeople seem to be more concerned with the economic accessibility of those solutions and of healthcare services in general. Stakeholders, for example, raise concerns that represent the stakes of a certain group (e.g. technology replaces nurses).

Especially in contexts where solutions to real-world problems are sought and complex issues are at stake, a holistic approach can help identify common ground for building solutions. Although we present our holistic picture here, it must be clearly stated that our approach is only a snapshot and has its limitations because the actors used different methods to generate their futures, which necessarily produce different results. Yet, this latter fact can neither be entirely attributed to the different actors nor to the specific methodological approach.

We therefore call for a multi-actor and multi-method foresight approach as a first step to integrating different views in RRI activities in the context of grand challenges such as ageing societies. Due to the scale of this challenge, which affects every aspect of society as well as everyone individually, in a literal sense (as we all get older), the integration of different views in RRI activities seems imperative. This is also emphasized by the call for a shared responsibility to commonly define whether technologies are desirable or not – a question which needs to be considered before the actual R&D process. Within a shared responsibility constellation, we suggest that the potential user of the technology should have the last say on that question.

The lowest common denominator of a desirable future that considers the perspectives of all three actor groups would be fostering human-centred innovation to deal with the challenges that arise from ageing societies. This may be supported by the incorporation of fundamental values and rights (EU Charta) in the process of developing Internet and communication technology (ICT)-based ATs (as in the VA project), the incorporation of stakeholders’ specific institutional context depending on ‘niche knowledge’ (as in the PACITA project), and incorporating laypeople’s knowledge and derived social needs into science, technology and innovation governance (as in the CIVISTI project).

In concrete contexts, visions and scenarios derived separately but in parallel from diverse actors could prove usable in making design processes more responsive to societies’ needs, since, unlike multi-stakeholder dialogues, the future imaginaries of each group can be identified and then subjected to comparative analysis and integration (cf. Blok 2014). This is all the more important as technology development is largely industry-driven, and its logics and way of acting follow an economic rationale rather than a societal perspective. Hence, emerging socio-technological systems require a careful rethinking of legal regulations, responsibility and the distribution of risks. Collective socio-technical imagining including different actors can contribute positively, especially, if not only, before and in the early stages of RRI development processes.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the project teams of CIVISTI-AAL and PACITA and VA, Innovendo, and the citizens and stakeholders who took part and contributed their valuable time, knowledge and experiences. The authors would also like to thank ZIT (Vienna Business Agency) for their research funding activities for CIVISTI-AAL, and the EC (FP7) for the PACITA project and VA (especially Alexandra Tingas from Innova Boston); both ZIT and the EC played important roles in the realization of the two projects and consequently in this analysis. In writing this paper, the authors also greatly benefited from the opportunity to discuss draft versions at the 2nd European PACITA Conference in Berlin (February 24–27, 2015) and from the comments and recommendations of two anonymous reviewers and the editor in chief.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Ulrike Bechtold holds a Masters degree and a Ph.D. in Human Ecology. She works in technology assessment and is a lecturer at the University of Vienna and MODUL University, Vienna. The main topics of her work include ambient and active assisted living (AAL) sustainability. Central to her work are participatory approaches to investigating interactions between man, nature and technology.

Niklas Gudowsky, MSc in Biology, researcher at the Institute of Technology Assessment of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. His work focuses on participatory foresight in the areas of sustainable science, technology and innovation governance within various participatory research projects, co-creating needs-based policy advice and shaping research agendas.

Leo Capari, MSc in Ecology and working as a researcher at the Institute of Technology Assessment of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. His fields of interest include ageing and technology, disabilities and the use of assistive technologies for better inclusion, participatory research, smart cities and sustainable consumption.

ORCID

L. Capari http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7867-4975

Notes

1. Formerly ambient assisted living: the development of the terminology here shows that the activity of the addressed subject, the elderly person, is at the fore.

2. The AAL Joint Programme is a European science funding scheme. Through its interdisciplinary, transnational and transinstitutional aspects, new technologies and products are developed to cope with the challenges of an ageing society: http://www.aal-europe.eu/why-another-aal-programme/.

3. VA – Value Ageing: a European FP7-funded Marie Curie project. VA aimed at strengthening cooperation between non-commercial and commercial entities by joint research to incorporate the fundamental values of the EU into Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for Ageing (Mantovani 2015). http://www.value-ageing.eu/ PACITA – Parliaments and civil society in Technology Assessment: European FP7-funded research project. A specific case-study on cross-European stakeholder involvement was conducted to develop expert scenarios and stakeholders’ recommendations as policy advice on future ageing in order to provide substantial input on national and EU policies. http://wp6.pacitaproject.eu/home/ CIVISTI AAL – Citizens Visions on Science Technology and Innovation – Ambient Assisted Living: Regional research project, funded by the Technology Agency of the City of Vienna. CIVISTI AAL applies a multi-actor approach, starting with laypersons imagining desirable futures, from which needs and demands are extracted to build needs-based policy advice for smart city agendas (Gudowsky and Sotoudeh 2015). http://www.leben2050.at.

4. We have been involved in central positions in the projects discussed, Bechtold as project leader in VA, Capari as process manager of WP6 in PACITA, and Gudowsky as process manager in CIVISTI-AAL. Each individual author has been no more than marginally involved in the other projects, which provides this analysis with the necessary outsiders’ perspective in each case.

5. http://www.value-ageing.eu/.

6. The complete scenarios can be found in Bechtold and Tingas (2012, 11–73).

7. Three main methodological clusters in of Parliamentary Technology Assessment – expert-based methods, stakeholder involvement, and citizen consultations – were exemplified by three cross-European case studies on the topics public health genomics, ageing society and sustainable consumption. http://www.pacitaproject.eu.

8. The stakeholder scenario workshops took place in ten European countries (spring/summer 2014): Austria, Bulgaria, Catalonia (Spain), Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Ireland, Norway, Switzerland and Wallonia (Belgium). Everywhere the same set of scenarios and the same methodological approach were used.

9. Detailed description of the method: http://www.civisti.org/ and Gudowsky and Sotoudeh (2017); For the Viennese case study, see http://www.leben2050.at/.