Innovation and responsibility: engaging with new and emerging technologies

Innovation and Responsibility: Engaging with New and Emerging Technologies is the fifth in a series of edited volumes of papers based upon presentations given at S.NET meetings. The articles represent some of the topics discussed and papers delivered at S.NET 2013, which was held at Northeastern University School of Law in Boston (USA) in October 2013.

S.NET (the Society for the Study of Nanoscience and Emerging Technologies) is an international community of mainly social science scholars but also practitioners interested in nanotechnology and other emerging technoscience fields. Each annual meeting gathers contributions from diverse academic and non-academic fields.

The book is the latest in the S.NET series, each volume representing the issues addressed at different annual meetings. The issue of Responsible Innovation (RI) has run through these volumes, and it has certainly come to the fore in both the fourth and the current fifth issue, from an earlier springboard in the third. In fact, the series could be seen as representing a sort of stepping stone through the emerging international RI debate that has been very much tied to the development of S.NET, which itself has been a driving force behind approaches to the topic from the scholarly field of science and technology studies (STS). Reflecting the broad make-up of the S.NET community, the book contains articles from both academics in various career positions (from Ph.D. candidates upwards) and professionals working in various fields that touch upon RI issues in different ways.

RI is by no means new to S.NET proceedings and publications. Looking back to the third volume in the series (van Lente et al. 2012) we find the topic addressed in ‘A Transatlantic Conversation on Responsible Innovation and Responsible Governance’ (Randles et al. 2012), a chapter that describes and presents the results of a round-table debate from the 2011 meeting. Discussion drew upon broad fields of interest, one of the most interesting being geographical differences in how RI is perceived and put into practice. The article presents divergent US and European viewpoints, including different perspectives upon what ‘the problem’ to be addressed actually is, which strategies to follow and actors to appeal to (very much reflecting issues brought up in the 2011 Franco-British workshop on responsible innovation: From concepts to practice, another foundation stone of the current debate¹). Such debate and publication of different interpretations seems to have in some way set an agenda for the series, one that was wholeheartedly taken up in the following volume and honed in the most recent issue.

Working forward through the series, the fourth volume, Shaping Emerging Technologies: Governance, Innovation, Discourse (Konrad et al. 2013) takes up many of the central issues in the current RI debate, several of which can be followed through the fifth issue and beyond.

For an example from the most recent volume, Sally Randles, Bärbel Dorbeck-Jung, Ralf Lindner and Arie Rip review the latest round-table discussion, which was on this occasion geared towards the future, with the question ‘Where to Next for Responsible Innovation?’ (Randles et al. 2012, 19–37). One point that I personally find interesting is that the report notes critical and skeptical interjections from the floor, many related to debating the interdisciplinary nature of RI study and the fear of a RI terminology being used as a veil for ‘business as usual’ growth-led innovation – for example, funding applications that increasingly require statements about considerations of RI in the proposed projects.

Another debate carried over from the previous issue is that of regulation, and in particular advantages or disadvantages of soft and hard regulation. The fourth issue contains a Regulatory Governance section that includes an article by Aline Reichow and Barbel Dorbeck-Jung in which they present a soft regulation classification scheme as a tool for supporting RI. In ‘How Can We Characterize Nano Specific Soft regulation? Lessons From Occupational Health and Safety Governance’ (pp. 83–102), Reichow and Dorbeck-Jung set out categories of soft regulation established to support risk management and risk assessment. They define soft regulation as “standards, guidelines, communications, benchmarks and codes of conduct” (p. 83). They go on to define six categories including policy goals, compliance and the authority of those regulating, arguing that such a scheme could make a potential contribution to regulatory policy.

Issues surrounding both soft and hard forms and approaches regulation are addressed in Christopher Bosso's ‘Nano Risk Governance, soft Law and the US Regulatory Regime’ in the most recent (2014) issue (pp. 7–18). Bosso argues however that there is ‘not much’ space for soft law in the US environmental regulation regime. Echoing some of the debate in the Randles et al. round-table (2012), he points to differences in EU and US approaches. He cites critics who argue that the US system is ‘muddling along’ (p. 12) with an outdated regulatory framework, a problem that has at least to some degree been addressed in Europe (thanks in part to emergencies such as mad cow disease). The examples he offers of soft law implementation within nanotechnology are not very encouraging, including the EPA Nanoscale Materials Stewardship Program, an allegedly poorly complied-with attempt to have companies voluntarily submit information (including risk management) regarding their nanomaterial production.

A further argument that runs through previous editions and beyond is that presented by Harro van Lente and Collette Bos. In ‘Unpacking the Grand Challenges of Nanotechnology’ (2014), the authors revisit and expand upon a problem that they first approached with Alexander Peine in the previous issue (Bos et al. 2013) and more recently elaborated upon in the this journal (Bos et al. 2014).

The three works investigate how ‘big words’ become ideological building blocks that are used in different situations to steer research to societal goals. Of the examples given and analyzed of ‘big words’, sustainability and responsible innovation appear to be used in quite similar ways. They both encompass concepts that are uncontested themselves, but that allow for multiple interpretations and specifications, with legitimacy gained through the use of these ‘words’ due to their uncontested nature.

In their earlier work ‘Articulation of Sustainability in Nanotechnology: Funnels of Articulation’ (Bos et al. 2013), the authors investigate the use of the term ‘sustainability’ using what they call ‘funnels of sustainability’. The funnel is a form of discourse organization, in which the reader or user is guided through broad interests in a line of reasoning that becomes ever more relevant to the process in question, while never being contested. The funnel is wide at the top, the uncontested category forms the opening, with the passage and the categories becomeing tighter as the funnel leads downwards.

To give their example, discourse passes from sustainability, through climate change to the greenhouse effect, on to CO₂ emission and fossil fuels and their (short) supply, leading to nanotechnology as a possible solution. The inclusion of the sun in the funnel leads to solar panels, meaning that both nanotechnology and solar power development (and related industries) can be placed within the sustainability umbrella without the relationship ever being contested.

In the 2014 article ‘Unpacking the Grand Challenges of Nanotechnology’ (Bos et al. 2014), the authors analyze how the notion of the ‘grand challenges’ currently pervading science and innovation policy across the EU is being articulated on national and international levels, following their analysis as described above. They studied the uses of particular phrases and words related to challenges in both EU and national research documents, finding that descriptions of EU challenges are broader and more focused on the problem at hand, while national policies are more solution orientated.

In their more recent article (Bos et al. 2014), the authors (with the addition of Bart Walhout) return to their research strategy, offering an analysis of ‘how steering with big words unfolds’. In ‘Steering with Big Words: Articulating Ideographs in Research Programs’, the authors further develop their analysis in the belief that it matters that ‘big words’ can mean very different things because of the effect that they actually have on science and technology development over time. In this article they use responsible innovation as a ‘big word’ looking at how the term is used in the Netherlands in relation to nanotechnology.

A further important aspect of the book under review is the inclusion of papers written by non-academics. Victoria Sutton's article is a fine example, offering a perspective that is not regularly heard within the RI community – one from inside the United States government. In ‘Hydrogen: A model for Regulating Emerging Technologies’, Sutton focuses on the case of Hydrogen energy regulation from her position as Chief Counsel of the Research and Innovative Technology Administration of the US Department of Transportation and Chair of the Ad Hoc Committee on a Regulatory Framework for a Hydrogen Economy.

The detailed description of the processes involved in creating legislation on a national basis are interesting to read and offer a further line of inquiry to those working within what we might define as a political approach to RI. Sutton addresses an argument that was also raised in the 2013 issue of the series by Daniele Ruggiu. In ‘A Rights-Based Model of Governance: The Case Of Human Enhancement and the Role of Ethics in Europe’ (Ruggiu, 2013), the author argues that “a clearer distinction of the role and function of ethics and law, as well as the development of mechanisms of self-coordination, can strengthen the current model of governance as a rights oriented one” (p. 103). Sutton seems to agree with Ruggiu's argument, as they both address the problem of international standards and point to political decision-making and qualification issues both within the national and international settings.

Politics and decision-making runs through several of the other papers in the book. In ‘From Lab Bench to Fuel Pump: Researchers’ Choices in the Development of Lignocellulosic Biofuels’, Maria Fernanda Campa et al. describe research conducted at the US Department of Energy's BioEnergy Science Center, a facility that was founded to help develop the nation's bio-energy future. The authors explore ‘decision junctures’, in order to see which considerations are given the most weight in the decision-making process. They argue that as the research is aimed for specific societal aims, it falls under the umbrella of responsible innovation, although I would question this assertion as it seems too broad and unproblematic a definition. Their findings are interesting in that they relate to personal and institutional driving factors, adding a further layer of complexity to the question of how to define RI in a real-world situation.

In conclusion, the book offers a good place for further development of previous arguments at an academic level, while also offering the reader very interesting alternative perspectives from both within the decision-making process and outside. It demonstrates the broad base and thinking of the S.NET community while offering a showcase of timely debate for researchers in many fields and at many levels to publish, and sits nicely in a series that is very much a driver in the RI debate.

ORCID

Jonathan Hankins http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8084-7524

Notes

1. Program details and video of the event are available here: http://www.ambafrance-uk.org/Franco-British-workshop-on.