Technology assessment as a myth buster: deconstructing myths around emerging technologies

ABSTRACT

Responsible Research and Innovation requires the debating of emerging technologies ‘upstream’. In discussions on radically novel technologies, comparisons with older technologies are often drawn. This leads to a transfer of assigned properties in the creation of rhetoric so that the new technology appears as a derivative of the older. Sometimes, several comparator technologies are at hand which may give the new technology a different image. Depending on the choices taken in rhetoric creation, a group of actors may acquire advantages over other groups, thereby establishing power relations and sometimes deciding the fate of the technology in question. In this paper, we analyse these processes through a ‘hermeneutic’ upstream technology assessment (TA) lens, while applying Roland Barthes’ concept of myths creation. Using the case examples of synthetic biology and neuro-enhancement, we highlight the importance of the role of comparators and the multilayered character of myths. The potential role of TA as a ‘myth buster’ may render another task of TA, namely, stimulating a public debate, more difficult because the issue at stake may appear less salient.

KEYWORDS:

• Mythologies
• emerging technologies
• upstream engagement
• comparator
• hermeneutic TA

Introduction

It is often claimed that the 1950s’ ‘Green Revolution’ had saved millions of Indians from starvation due to famine. But has it really? In a conference keynote in 2015, Roger Pielke Jr. explained that the actual famine never occurred (Pielke 2015). Although taken for granted, the Green Revolution’s life-saving power was an innovation story grounded in ‘more than just the empirical’. Pielke called it a political myth: an untestable but intuitively convincing tale making people believe to support claims pro futuro. He adjudged severe real-world consequences to such narratives and demanded  technology assessment (TA) to identify and debunk them.

Debates over new technologies have many facets, but in some cases, interests, hopes and fears condense into slogans that may indeed give rise to myths (Hopkins et al. 2007). For example, nuclear fission was said to provide ‘power too cheap to meter’, nanotechnology to ‘build objects atom by atom’, synthetic biology (SB) to ‘turn biology into true engineering’ and cognitive enhancement to ‘transgress the limits of human condition’. Dystopic views follow a similar pattern: nuclear power was said to ‘poison us’ with invisible radiation, nanotechnology to turn the world into ‘grey goo’, SB to allow mad scientists to ‘play God’ and cognitive enhancers to turn our children into intoxicated zombies. Once propelled out in the world, myths appear self-evident and compete for the hearts and brains of stakeholders and the public.

In ancient societies, myths have played an important role in explaining the world, but nowadays they seem at odds with an enlightened modernity. Nevertheless, they do not disappear – precisely some aspects of new and emerging technologies (NESTs) seem prone to nurture myths when the stakes are high. The dilemma arising from the lack of available knowledge and the need to influence the trajectory (Collingridge 1980) often tempts stakeholders to make comparisons with previous technologies. Obviously, the precedents invoked and their interpretations differ according to the respective interests regarding feasibility, risks or benefits. Both supporters and opponents claim to base their views on facts, but oftentimes imaginations of futures (whether bright or gloomy) prevail. Consequently, strategic communication involving exuberant promises or serious threats (Kastenhofer 2009) shape the technology’s public image.

Of course, this is not a comprehensive picture of all debates about NESTs, but a scenario that scientists, developers and policy-makers fear and that influences how they deal with NESTs (Rip 2006). A possible solution is often seen in ‘Responsible Research and Innovation’ (RRI), which aims at shaping technological development in a responsible way by involving multiple actors (Owen, Macnaghten, and Stilgoe 2012) at an early stage when the trajectory can still be influenced (Guston and Sarewitz 2001).

To meet Pielke’s demand, what can TA contribute if ‘facts’ are rare? Grunwald (2013a) proposed that TA could at least assess what is being said through a ‘hermeneutic’ TA. It could reveal how stakeholders support or oppose an issue and what the underlying values, interests and power relations are, using tools¹ such as vision assessment (Grin and Grunwald 2000) or the analysis of myths (Grunwald 2014). This requires an adequate conceptual understanding; while vision assessment has been elaborated for a TA context, myths remain somewhat enigmatic as an object of analysis. In his talk, Pielke identified three elements of political myths, namely, beliefs, acts and symbols. However, his overall description of myths (‘shared stories we tell ourselves that motivate why and how we act in a collective way’)² does not say much about their characteristics, how they come into life, how they work, what purpose they serve, how we can deconstruct them and what we gain or lose by debunking them.

This article proposes a way to address myths about NESTs in a TA setting, drawing on Roland Barthes’s ‘Mythologies’ (Barthes 1973). We will discuss different meanings associated with the term ‘myth’ and, with a view to Barthes, explain how TA-relevant myths come into life. SB will provide an example to demonstrate how comparators in expert discourses promote myths. With the example of neuro-enhancement (in the following NE), we will show how public debates mirror expert discourses and highlight the multilayered character of myths. Finally, we will discuss how myth analysis could help assess NESTs and what the ‘myth buster’ role may entail for TA.

Myths – more than a nuisance

Pielke’s use of the term comes close to an everyday understanding of myths as bundles of unproven stories about enigmatic facts, generalising different versions and expressing them in a way that intuitively makes sense. Myths deliberately distort reality to serve the interests of those who tell them.³ They spread because they are so catchy, but it is difficult to determine whether people telling them believe in their truth or only pretend to do so. In short, myths are a nuisance to an enlightened society.

In a scholarly understanding building on cultural studies, a myth is much more than a nuisance. Admittedly, it is a historically not verifiable or, by its fantastical character, miraculous narrative. Nevertheless, it creates meaning and provides explanations or interpretations of issues difficult to grasp (Jamme and Matuschek 2014, 12). Even more so, it offers an opportunity to construct coherent self-interpretations and provides clues to social and historical significance (Jamme and Matuschek 2014, 19). In an anthropological perspective, myths explain to a group how something puzzling came into existence and why it is as it is, using images derived from peoples’ experiences (Lévi-Strauss 1978). By providing group ownership of meaning, the explanatory power of a myth has an important cultural and political function.⁴ These insights were generated studying traditional societies, but they are still relevant today.

By providing genealogical explanations, myths bridge the past, present and future. This both historical and ahistorical structure (Lévi-Strauss 1955, 430) puts myths close to political ideologies. The collection of statements on an issue provides a ‘code’ or language that integrates norms and facts and creates an immobile world (Brune 2003). Emerging from cultural consensus, myths involve the deliberate suppression of alternative connotative meanings: ‘The mythical signification […] is always in part motivated [as] there is no myth without motivated form’ (Barthes 1973, 136). This aspect of exclusivity of meaning becomes especially important with regard to dominating a discourse. Myths mostly serve an aim; they influence perceptions or provide a suggestive explanatory basis for decisions that otherwise might be controversial (Blumenberg 2014).

Expanding the meaning of myths from historically decontextualised narratives to contemporary socially operating devices, Bottici and Challand (2006)⁵ focus on the social role. Accordingly, myths relieve a distressed individual overcharged with an increasing amount of information by identifying the unknown and reducing complexity: myths render life meaningful because they provide explanations – even if insufficient or illogical upon closer inspection. This makes them attractive, which they need to spread – the process of reception and reproduction guarantees their survival. Bottici and Challand (2006) emphasise that the success of a myth depends on its suggestiveness, even more so than on the relevance for (political) actors.

In their article, Bottici and Challand (2006) explicitly refer to the work of Hans Blumenberg on myths, especially to his argument that in a changing environment, the narrative needs flexibility to stay meaningful for a community. This may explain in part why a myth acquires a life of its own (Barthes 1973): it then becomes independent and spirals out of the control of its originator.

Used intentionally, the explanatory power of a myth, however, may be applied to promote (doubtful) political aims. Under the term ‘prefiguration’ (Blumenberg 2014), Blumenberg analyses the process of repetition and transfer of meaning from historic events to actual situations to serve a contestable political aim.⁶ Such a process involves reference to a seemingly unambiguous past by providing a strong interpretation that is suggested to be consensual. It then transfers this interpretation to an actual case, drawing an intuitive analogy. As a result, the actual case becomes equally unambiguous and consensual. Such an operation provides a strong basis for arguing for and defending decisions and the easy dismissal of counterarguments.

Myths seem to be self-evident, and their role in society is essential because they provide a commonly shared basis of understanding to cope with the unknown. But how they arise and what makes them so attractive still remain unclear. A social psychological perspective may shed some light on this. The concept of social representation (Moscovici and Duveen 2000)⁷ focusses on the analysis of the symbolic ‘narrative coping’ of lay people as they deal with uncertainty in difficult technological issues, objectification and ‘naturalisation’ of the unknown (Bauer and Gaskell 1999).⁸ Accordingly, people communicate about familiar things in a way characteristic of a group, which provides meaning and group adherence. This way of communication about familiar things is extended to unfamiliar ones to metaphorically ‘anchor’ and objectify them in order to ‘naturalise’ them, to make them understandable and interpret them in a group-compatible way. An anchor might not entirely fit, so coping may imply a new reality that, if viewed from an outside perspective, appears distorted. Individuals and groups constantly create representations they adhere to and that help them to understand and form an opinion about unfamiliar issues. This suggests that representations contribute to the formation of myths – if an attractive anchor is provided, one may speculate, a myth can be generated.

The Barthian mythology

A pragmatic, operational understanding of modern myths around emerging technologies can be found going back to a concept the French (post-)structuralist Roland Barthes developed long ago. In his famous 1957 book ‘Mythologies’ (Barthes 1973), he departs from the notion of myths being ‘a type of speech’ (Barthes 1973, 117) that conveys a message. He combined this with Claude Lévi-Strauss’s ethnological perspective where myths are ‘ … language, functioning on an especially high level where meaning succeeds practically at “taking off” from the linguistic ground’ (Lévi-Strauss 1955, 430f). Thus, Barthes (1973) conceived myths as rooted both within and outside of speech. Not confined to particular media, a myth can be expressed through art, literature, rites or social practices (Bottici and Challand 2006). While anything can take on the role of language in conveying myths, visual representation, for example, photographs, are especially prone.⁹ Barthes thus transferred the ideas of (ethnological) myth analysis to the phenomena of everyday culture and ‘mythical’ occurrences (Brune 2003, 86).

Earlier, Ferdinand de Saussure had characterised speech as linguistic signs attributed to objects to enable communication, highlighting the randomness of the connection between ‘reality’ and ‘sign’ (Lévi-Strauss 1955, 429). Saussure’s language theory considers a sign to be an amalgam of the signified (a concept or object of a word) and the signifier (a word as the phonetic sequence). For example, if we think of a seagull and associate this concept with the phonetics of the spoken word ‘seagull’, the result, that is, the sign ‘seagull’, makes sense and can be understood as a word meaning a bird living by the sea. Barthes took this concept a step further and added a second layer with a similar operation. Thus, a myth is a ‘second-order’ system where a meaningful sign, the result from a linguistic operation of amalgamating a concept (the signified) and a word (a signifier), itself becomes a signifier for yet another level of connotative meaning (another signified). To stick with our example, the sign ‘seagull’ becomes a signifier for other objects such as the sea, summer holidays, birds’ shrieking, etc.

Barthes suggested that on this second level, an originally meaningful sign is emptied to become a signifier for something else (Barthes 1973, 126–127). The amalgamated result of filling a partially emptied form with this ‘something else’ is not only a (linguistic) sign. Rather, it is an appellative message carrying a new significance. However, it still draws from the sign’s original meaning – it superficially appears the same – and thus becomes a myth (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Concept of myth formation according to Barthes.

A myth ‘parasitises’ a sign; it renders it empty and fills it with a new suggestive meaning in a non-transparent way: imagining a seagull, we automatically think of a beach, sunshine and holidays. The meaning of a myth, hence, derives from linking a concrete single incident with a continuous structure. The new significance appears as if the issue necessarily had to be that way from its very nature – a quasi-ontological identity, if only rhetorically created. In other words, a myth assigns intrinsic properties to an issue in a way that intuitively appears logical and natural. It often suggests a particular explanation without offering the slightest factual proof, which appears unnecessary – the mere suggestion is sufficient because it is so convincing. Nevertheless, myths do not lie or hide; rather, they distort or introduce a modification (Barthes 1973, 137), stripping a sign of its historical context.

Apart from rendering the term more operational, Barthes extended the second-order system to a third, fourth, etc., order. This means that a myth itself can become a signifier to be filled with the meaning of yet another signified, giving rise to a new myth, and so on. The result is a chain of consecutive myths deriving from each other. This suggests understanding myths as multilayered systems and invites identifying and analysing previous and potential successive myth-creating operations in the chain. To do so, the respective ‘signified’ needs to be identified, that is, the concept or object that takes over, colonises the emptied form and renders it a mere signifier. Analysing myths (i.e. being a ‘mythologist’), accordingly, demands reading a myth as it appears. Rather than stating that the respective sign is a mere symbol for the signifier, or that both have nothing to do with each other, a mythologist needs to acknowledge and ‘consume’ its intended message to deconstruct the implicit meaning conveyed.¹⁰

If we approach the Green Revolution in a Barthian way, a chain of myths emerges: in a first step, ‘Green Revolution’ as the signifier was associated with the notion of industrialised agriculture. In a second step, the notion of fight against world hunger colonised this ‘industrialised’ Green Revolution. Years later, the resulting myth-as-a-message was linked to the discourse on agricultural biotechnology – the latter became the signifier, the Green Revolution the signified. This resulted in the message of biotechnology being a further revolution in agriculture necessary to feed the world. Over time, assessments of agricultural biotechnology scrutinised many technological and societal aspects, while the Green Revolution implicitly or explicitly remained a reference point for both critics and supporters.

One step further, this debate (with its futile supporter/opponent confrontation) again served as a blueprint for conflicts expected to arise over NESTs. Apart from nanotechnology (Rip 2006), especially SB was said to be likely to meet resistance among the public (ETC Group 2007). Empirical investigations showed that SB indeed meets objections similar to those against genetic engineering (Kronberger, Holtz, and Wagner 2012). Public perception of neurotechnologies, too, has been shown to be ambivalent (for a review on attitudes towards cognitive enhancement, see Schelle et al. 2014). These and other hints at public scepticism prompted various administrations to spend much money to educate the public and ‘enhance’ public debate, hoping to evade further controversies that appeared inescapable.¹¹

Myths in the context of NESTs

With the Green Revolution, Pielke identified a myth in retrospect. In the context of emerging technologies, however, we see myths ‘in the making’, emerging from hopes, fears, expectations, warnings, polemics, expert opinions, political statements, etc. Different interpretations compete for attention and, ultimately, for discursive dominance, that is, for the power to determine the default view upon a technology that appears obvious. Various approaches have been applied to analyse debates on emerging technologies (e.g. Selin 2008; for systems biology: Döring et al. 2015), in particular, metaphor (e.g. Boon and Moors 2008) and vision analysis (Grin and Grunwald 2000).

Here we may note the relation between metaphors and myths. Lakoff and Johnsen (2003, 36) described metaphors as ‘ … a way of conceiving of one thing in terms of another, and its primary function is understanding’. Accordingly, it is impossible to avoid metaphors when speaking or thinking. They not only mirror existing similarities between two concepts; in addition, when transferring elements from one area to the other, metaphors create – or distort – reality by hiding or emphasising them. This makes metaphor analysis a technique, complementing myth analysis, for unravelling underlying or unconscious conceptualisations as they manifest in language.¹²

Regarding vision assessment, Grunwald (2014, in the abstract) proposed ‘to no longer treat the understanding of the possible meanings of NEST in the RRI debates as a secondary feature, but to put them at the focus of analysis and reflection’. Vision assessment should address and discuss implicit presuppositions in perceptions of new technologies we still know little about. It draws from the old ‘leitbild’ concept (Dierkes, Hoffmann, and Marz 1992), indicating an effective but implicit guiding principle for technical innovation.¹³ A leitbild of an emerging technology (such as the ‘paperless office’) may contribute to a (deliberately planned) technological future through scenarios, public debates and stakeholder discourses (Grin and Grunwald 2000); it is future-oriented and close to an engineering context.

From an Science and Technology Studies (STS) perspective, the co-production of technologies with and within society manifests itself in the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries (Jasanoff and Kim 2009). They compile ideas, hopes and fears about technologies as part of social life, fuelled by everyday practices, linking the present with an imagined future within a particular, often national, context. Their definition as ‘collective imagined forms of social life and social order reflected in the design and fulfilment of […] scientific and/or technological projects’ (Jasanoff and Kim 2009, 120; cited in Jasanoff and Kim 2015, 19) suggests some overlap with myths. However, while we support the contextual focus prominently argued for in STS studies, we explicitly refrain from a national-bound interpretation of technology myths as this is not in line with our empirical findings (see below) – in the context of NE, for example, the assumption of nationally different interpretations of the technology is hardly tenable. Additionally, we understand sociotechnical imaginaries as broader and more encompassing; they provide opportunities to capture narratives beyond the scope of the intentionality of myths and, therefore, reflect a greater variety of emerging technology discourses. Sociotechnical imaginaries provide guidance adapted to a context, indicating future directions that appear intuitively plausible and attractive, but they seem to emerge rather than being deliberately crafted. In contrast, myths on NESTs can arise from intentionally created, persisting narratives that underlie a debate. Hence, myth analysis may be a complement to other methods and perspectives.

What visions, leitbilder or sociotechnical imaginaries have in common is that their attractiveness depends upon their ability to make sense, to provide intuitively attractive meaning and thus to reduce uncertainty in issues that are difficult to grasp; in other words, upon their ability to ‘familiarise the unfamiliar’. This function is at the heart of the social representation concept Bauer and Gaskell (1999) applied to the public understanding of NEST, especially to biotechnology. They added a temporal dimension to the concepts of narrative coping with uncertainty, making representation a ‘project’ where individuals interact in relation to an object over time. To visualise the idea, they devised a series of triangles posed behind each other – the relation of two individuals and an object at a particular point in time, followed by the same arrangement at another point and so on. This ‘Toblerone’ model¹⁴ depicts the development of a representation over time. A bundle of Toblerone bars, then, indicate different social representations of an issue. While the concept of social representation suggests how myths emerge, the Toblerone model offers a perspective on how they are propagated through communication, and how they change according to the contexts.

Myth analysis in action

Retrospective reflection and the analysis of myths in politically relevant contexts are, comparatively speaking, rather straightforward. With NESTs, myths are still in the making; thus, it remains unclear which competing narrative will become powerful or disappear. Why should we, and how can we analyse myths that have not yet found their final form? To trace myths ‘in the making’, we will present two cases of contested innovative fields (SB and NE) aligned to very different narratives. We will first introduce the concept of ‘technological comparators’ as it manifests in the expert discourse on SB to highlight the aspect of intentionality. With NE we will extend our perspective to public debates and show the effect of ‘underlying myths’.

The role of comparators in the mythology of SB

SB attempts to introduce ‘true engineering principles’ into biology; it sees itself as a constructive discipline that realises the unfulfilled promises genetic engineering made decades ago.¹⁵ In a dominant expert understanding,¹⁶ this implies that, in analogy to electronics, standardised ‘biological parts’ (DNA sequences) having reproducible properties can be readily combined and introduced into new devices. Parts are mounted on a ‘chassis’, that is, installed in an organism deprived of all functions except those necessary for survival, providing the basis for production facilities of hitherto unknown versatility and simplicity. Another interpretation focuses on the role in basic research (de Lorenzo and Danchin 2008). Following Richard Feynman’s saying of ‘what I cannot create, I do not understand’,¹⁷ SB provides tools for analysing the basic functions of life by building new life forms bottom-up, yielding insights inaccessible so far (Rasmussen 2010). Although practical benefits are expected, the industrial aspect is not at the fore in this line of reasoning.

In both cases, SB draws analogies to information technology with the carrier of information being DNA instead of electrons (Heinemann and Panke 2006). This comparison is both suggestive and promising because it renders difficult facts and procedures easily understandable. At the same time, it suggests a bright future, much like that information technology had in retrospect at a similar point in development (in the early 1970s). Multiple analogies have been brought forward, from SB ‘garage shops’ looming to the predicted ubiquitous presence of the technology some decades into the future. To illustrate this comparison, Andrianantoandro et al. (2006) mounted the different information hierarchies in SB and in computer sciences side by side in a suggestive way. The message is obvious: SB not only is like, but also is a kind of information technology and its future will be equally bright.

A totally different picture emerges from the cover of an early NGO report (ETC 2007, Figure 2). The ‘Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration’ (ETC Group) had engaged in the struggle against agricultural biotechnology and was among the first to raise critique at SB. The cover picture showed a paraphrase of Michelangelo’s famous Sistine Chapel painting of Man’s creation, depicting God admonishing Man not to play with a DNA molecule made of Lego bricks. It played with several motifs: the Lego analogy scientists kept highlighting, the DNA molecule as a symbol of life and the suggestion that God was not amused over Man playing God using Lego bricks. The report’s title ‘Extreme Genetic Engineering’ explicitly suggested the comparison. It alluded to the allegation of scientific hubris brought forward in past debates over eugenics, agricultural biotechnology and risk. By implicit reference, the cover suggested that much like genetic engineering, SB was doomed to fail due to its inherent hubris, which would entail excessive public controversies.

Figure 2. The ETC group’s depiction of SB. Source: By courtesy of ETC group (2007) (http://www.etcgroup.org/).

Information technology and genetic engineering suggest two entirely different stories without providing evidence for any of them (Bogner and Torgersen 2015). How would they appear in a Barthian view? (Döring and Torgersen 2012). Let us conceive ‘SB’ as the signifier, that is, a word to be filled with something signified, a concept or object. Let us say the signifier ‘SB’ is empty and gains meaning from the signified. The signified may consist of different objects; often it is derived from (or is) a comparator that is put in the place of the object. If the signified is ‘genetic engineering’, SB no longer is considered ‘like’ it, but rhetorically acquires particular properties – SB semantically turns into genetic engineering in a 2.0 version. This is because the signifier ‘SB’ is not empty but still carries meaning, if only that of a powerful new technology. In contrast, if the signified is ‘information technology’ and exceeds the ‘as if’ character, SB turns into an information technology with a biological information carrier (DNA). Rhetorically, the known properties of information technology are conveyed to SB. In the end, the amalgam is totally different in each case – a menacing extension of genetic engineering prone to raise endless debates and inviting mad scientists to play God, or a novel information technology in its infancy with a bright future that will become pervasive.

This operation of assigning meaning from something with a disputable relationship to the term SB is not made explicit, and the result, the ‘sign’ in the language of Barthes, becomes a myth. The term myth is thus being defined as the result of the implicit assignment of a new borrowed meaning to a term, keeping intact some of its previous content but filling it with the character of the source of the borrowed meaning. It assigns new and seemingly intrinsic properties to the issue the signifier stood for in the beginning; it ‘naturalises’ the issue in terms of the signified. In the end, it appears as if the issue ontologically is as depicted, that SB, by its very nature, is genetic engineering version 2.0 or information technology with a new carrier, respectively.

Meaning is conveyed by genetic engineering and information technology as ‘comparators’ for SB (Torgersen and Schmidt 2013). The public make sense of the respective established technology because they already have heard about it or have encountered its products. SB, new and unknown, is said to be like the older one, respectively, emphasising a set of characteristics and attributes that appear easily transferable. Beyond technical details, people get an idea of what SB is like, what it might be used for and where the associated pros and cons are. Similarities and differences between old and new are not systematically compared; rather, the older technology provides a gross orientation, assigning a certain ‘nature’ – characteristic and seemingly intrinsic properties – to the new one. In the end, the latter is considered literally akin to the older in almost every respect, except those that deliberately make up the ‘novelty’. The new technology no longer ‘is like’ the older; rather, it is rhetorically transformed into a variety of the older. The image of the older technology determines or at least strongly influences the perception and discursively ‘colonises’ the new one.¹⁸

In popular scientific debates, comparators often set the frame, enabling people to speak about the new technology (Bogner and Torgersen 2015). At the same time, ideas about technological concepts distorted through mere transfer give rise to myths that are held to be true without further evidence. Myths benefit certain actors and harm the interests of others; this can be exploited: if the ‘signified’ can be almost any object, an interested actor may conceptually link to a new technology whatever he or she wants in order to pursue a particular aim – for example, to elicit certain associations or emotions with a target group or the general public.

In the context of SB, we see competing myths propagated by different stakeholders. This suggests intentionality – an object is deliberately put in the place of the signified not by chance, but by an actor with an interest. Critics want to make people believe that SB is genetic engineering version 2.0; and engineers pushing the issue suggest that SB is akin to what they always have been doing. Actors compete in promoting their interpretation to create a dominant myth that will determine the future of the technology and the distribution of risks and benefits. As long as myths are still in the making, it is not clear which one will be dominant in the end. Once settled, it may be difficult to overturn the narrative as it will appear self-evident.

Myths in the making: NE

In a debate about NESTs, elements of meaning flow in from many previous debates. Issues are not yet settled and uncertainty about who might benefit from a particular interpretation prevails. In such a case, we may directly observe the formation of a ‘second-order’ myth: an issue gets linked to an existing ‘underlying’ myth. For this process, a look at the expert debate around a technology with an unclear profile is helpful.

NE aims at improving the performance of the human brain. This can pertain to attention, cognition, memory, creativity or other abilities (Hildt and Franke 2013). Means may be drinking coffee (ingesting caffeine), taking prescription or illegal drugs such as methyl-phenidate (Ritalin) or amphetamine, or applying trans-cranial magnetic or constant current stimulation (Nuffield Council 2013). Existing social practices use old methods of low efficacy; new experimental technologies are unlikely to become popular soon (Hildt and Franke 2013). Nevertheless, from time to time the media try to raise interest by reporting that new powerful methods are imminent.

Promises respond to individual wishes for boosting brain performance to cope with the increasing demands in a competitive society (Grunwald 2013b). A different motive comes from a trans-humanist agenda – to sketch out new ways of overcoming human limitations and thus extending the conditio humana (Savulescu and Bostrom 2009). Another motive is linked to innovative playfulness as trans-cranial stimulation has become popular among young ‘brain hackers’. Devices are sold over the Internet to the gaming community, promising improved performance and conveying a taste of coolness (NERRI 2016).

Thus, NE appears multifacetted: practices span from everyday habits to criminal offences, means from established drugs to experimental treatments, and intentions from acquiring a positional good to science-fiction-inspired ideology – different meanings may be attributed to the idea of enhancement and appear self-evident (Ferrari, Coenen, and Grunwald 2012). While the trans-humanist approach is expert-driven, ‘brain hacking’ emerges from a lay perspective. Many parallel discourses apply the term NE differently. There is no dominant interpretation of what NE ‘is’ and what it serves to; rather, groups of experts or lay people with particular interests assign various meanings to it.

The sources of meaning are diverse. Trans-humanists take up ideas from science fiction such as locating human consciousness in a data cloud or technically extending the human lifespan.¹⁹ Other sources relate to health, such as NE as applied to save lives or restore normal function, which implies questions of risk and safety. In interviews, medical experts criticised the blurring distinction between therapy and enhancement, which they compared to developments such as doping in sports and aesthetic surgery (Sauter et al. 2015; NERRI 2016). This throws up the question of misuse and personal freedom, of what is normal and ‘natural’. NE, accordingly, might assign advantages to individuals unfairly, blurring the distinction between genuine skills and artificially acquired performance. Other experts focussed on societal aspects, speculating that the wish for NE may result from not being able to cope with an increasingly competitive society. In fact, society may become over-competitive through its widespread use.

All this is not confined to NE but is derived from other discourses, such as on doping, recreational drug use or competition in late capitalism. Motives and thought patterns are borrowed in order to assign meaning to NE through implicit comparisons, suggesting ways to handle the ambivalent subject. When expert and policy-makers’ views reach public debates, aspects become aligned with individual perspectives. Elements of meaning are picked from previous debates, assigned to NE and the results compete for interpretative dominance.

An example is the myth-generating power of lay initiatives such as brainhacking. Similar to the biohacker movement in SB, it derives its meaning from practices in information technology (which the designation ‘hacker’ refers to). In SB, the notion of coolness, non-conformism, joy and potential economic reward goes along with the ‘hacker’ image (Torgersen and Schmidt 2013). Irrespective of the technology, the do-it-yourself approach emphasises self-determination and the freedom of experimenting with one’s own body in complete autonomy. Tinkering with NE is a means to live out this autonomy, engaging in competitions using self-built devices.

Alternative comparisons lead to entirely different images of NE. In expert workshops and focus groups²⁰ with teachers and students, some participants compared NE having coffee, an everyday practice, to forbidden doping using amphetamine. Others emphasised the consequences of an over-competitive society; comparisons were made to cosmetic surgery blurring the boundary between therapy and enhancement or to cheating in the classroom as a morally doubtful but widespread practice. In these stories, NE was either ‘like’ another practice such as cosmetic surgery, or ‘akin’ to something else, that is, doping. In bona fide comparisons, one issue was juxtaposed to the other; in naturalisations, the rhetoric creation of a quasi-ontological identity entailed a transfer of seemingly intrinsic properties from the comparator to the issue at stake.

With myths in the making, the comparator slowly takes over. To use a Barthian language: initially, the sign remains ‘full’, but slowly gets colonised by the new signified. Depending on the comparator, the implicit acceptability differed widely and proposed different moral consequences and measures (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Alternative myths on NE.

Despite differences, almost all focus groups raised the issue of competition. The perceived need to react to the real (or presumed) pressure to perform better was a leitmotif of the debates. This common predicament appeared irrespective of the technical means and their acceptability. Consequently, NE was rejected not because of perceived risks or drawbacks of a particular technique, but because participants felt a pressure to perform better and bear all the costs, while the benefit would go to those who exert the pressure; in other words, they felt exploited. In a Barthian perspective: a sign, cognitive performance, is turned into a signifier and gets colonised by a new signified, competition, giving rise to the new myth of cognitive performance irreducibly linked to competition – a chain of myths emerges (Figure 4).

Figure 4. The myth chain as part of a network.

Tracing the chain back, the idea of social pressure to enhance performance has its roots in developments said to challenge present living conditions, such as the competitive knowledge society, the global productivity race, etc. The underlying myth of competitiveness might be fuelled by fears of competition defined as a value in itself, of meeting one’s ‘natural’ performance limits, of losing edge to those still at bay but becoming superior, etc. However, the seemingly inescapable solution, NE by technological means, appears as ‘sheer madness’, as a participant put it, because the underlying ideas are perceived as mad. The notion of pressure from competition (as the ‘signified’) may itself be the result of a myth-generating process. Further analysis might render the chain into a network of myths, where both the signifier and the signified are derived from myth-generating processes.

Taken together, the images of established practices or older technologies determine the perception of the new one; they discursively ‘colonise’ it, giving rise to potential myths. The new technology no longer ‘is like’ the older; rather, it is rhetorically transformed into a variety of the older. In an everyday setting, myths as (partly) decontextualised narratives can be linked into chains, handing meaning from one myth to the other, creating networks of myths whose elements may derive from debates long gone. Such a chain of myths can indicate long-standing power relations, benefiting some actors and hindering others from pursuing their interests. A dominant myth may thus influence or even decide the discursive or political fate of a technology to come in a distant future.

TA – more than a myth buster?

Sense making by transferring meaning and linking previously unconnected issues is a universal process that allows individuals and groups to cope with the unfamiliar such as NESTs. Linking may be deliberate or, at least, supported to influence the debate and, subsequently, to shape the image of an issue. Myths, therefore, are an inevitable part of any debate on a new technology. What does this entail for TA – should debunking myths be a genuine function, and what is the analytical and practical value of such an endeavour?

TA has been assigned with different tasks that may be summarised under an analytic and an interactive perspective (Van Eijndhoven 1997). In its beginnings during the 1970s, TA was a mainly analytic endeavour to provide Parliament (the US Congress) with independent technical expertise on technological issues with potential financial, economic, environmental, health or social impacts, so that Members no longer had to depend on partisan information.²¹ Early warning of unintended consequences from novel technologies also became a major issue. Debunking myths was an essential part in this analytic activity as the aim was to arrive at an ‘objective’ assessment using the best factual evidence available.

Later in Europe, forms of TA developed ‘in which the analytic product became of relatively minor importance compared to the interactive process’ (Van Eijndhoven 1997). Involving the public through participative formats, such as the consensus conference, aimed at including lay expertise and independent non-expert views into a ‘public TA’ to provide a more comprehensive collection of stances and to prevent expert views (and interests) from dominating (Joss and Durant 1995). Like previous forms, public TA should inform policy-makers to enable them to shape technologies along the lines of the public good, preventing the dominance of partisan interests. In contrast, constructive TA (Schot and Rip 1997) was devised to influence design practices by bringing stakeholder and user perspectives into the actual construction work with the aim to arrive at ‘socially robust’ technology (Nowotny, Scott, and Gibbons 2001). Debunking myths was not at the fore here.

More recently in the context of RRI, key concepts such as the co-responsibility of actors and the responsiveness of research and innovation agendas to societal requirements experienced an upswing. Clarifying societal needs requires the participation of stakeholders and the broader public in technology development (Von Schomberg 2012). With emerging technologies, real-time or ‘upstream’ assessments incorporate the views of stakeholders and the public at an early point to influence developments in a rational way (Guston and Sarewitz 2001). Compared to older modes of TA, upstream assessment of emerging technologies requires organising participatory activities tailored to the respective demand, which has become a core task for TA.

‘Upstream’ TA should identify potential futures as they emerge from the visions and imaginaries of stakeholders, experts and members of the public. Probably, these futures will not materialise at any point in time; rather, they indicate existing preferences in present society (Lösch 2006). This is an analytic task that requires, to some degree, a debunking function not least because these futures exert power through framing and guiding wishes and thoughts. Apart from identifying and describing visions, TA needs to contribute to the understanding of where they are derived from, what lies behind them, what they imply and how they might develop in future. The myth concept comes in handy here. In addition, the TA field always had the pretension of identifying and deconstructing hidden power relations that influence the distribution of risks and benefits from novel technologies. Beyond ‘establishing the facts’, analysing who might have an interest in shaping and propagating myths may help to identify power relations and enable disadvantaged actors.

However, there is a caveat: TA approaches themselves might unwillingly contribute to the creation of myths. By definition, an emerging technology is unknown and disconnected from peoples’ everyday worlds, so an ‘upstream’ public or stakeholder debate is always held on an ambiguous and uncertain ground. It is necessary to convey to the participants an adequate picture of the technology and its context in the discussions. It must be sketched out in a way understandable to lay people; in addition, its relevance needs to be emphasised to make stakeholders and the public engage. This is usually done via comparators and analogies to more familiar technologies and applications (Bogner and Torgersen 2015) – a necessary step but inevitably, particular aspects may be hyped or neglected. In other words, a process of myth generation might be activated. Providing a stage in participatory events then might result in placing one myth against the other without coming to a conclusion. As the media logic primarily goes for salience, myth generation is especially imminent if the engagement process and its results gain media attention. While coverage is an asset in times of impact measurement, it may complicate the task of TA to perform a ‘reality check’ on emerging technologies. Being a myth buster and saying that the emperor is naked, however, do not really help in promoting a discussion. Nevertheless, TA must diligently control for any attempt at ‘emptying’ the original sign. This implies procedural provisions, such as, for example, making sure that comparators are identified as such and that the similarities and differences between the comparators and the technology to be explained are clearly stated. Otherwise, the process of upstream engagement carries the risk of (re-)producing or promoting myths that might become dominant. The double task of upstream TA – stimulating a debate while unmasking unwarranted claims – remains a tightrope walk.

There is a more fundamental problem in the debunking of myths deriving from the insight that they cannot be avoided. Myths have an essential function for understanding difficult and unfamiliar issues, for providing meaning and addressing uncertainty, and also for group coherence. If factual information is scarce, a debate will inevitably bring up myths. The analytic task of TA demands debunking them, but the myth buster activity needs to be accompanied by more constructive approaches, providing new perspectives to combat normative uncertainty. Such a combination could show a way towards an ‘enlightened mythology’ that identifies and analyses myths as they appear in the debates over the roll-out of NESTs, and, at the same time, provide sober orientation that may help to create new innovative and coherent sociotechnical imaginaries.

Candidates for constructive approaches may be found in interdisciplinary activities aimed at sociotechnical collaboration to support Responsible Innovation (for a review, see Fisher et al. 2015). Such collaboration focuses on the ‘relation of expert practices to their (often segregated) social context, operates in close proximity to the expert practices in question, and functions to catalyse or support transformation of those practices in their societal context’ (Fisher et al. 2015, 41). Various approaches have been tried, and although they have been criticised in terms of potential capture or lack of outcome (see Chapter 2.4 in Fisher et al. 2015), many scholars consider some form of sociotechnical collaborations a necessary prerequisite for Responsible Innovation. In combination with myth analysis and myth busting, collaborations could give rise to a form of ‘midstream’ (Fisher, Mahajan, and Mitcham 2006) TA, particularly in the modes of ‘problematising’ and ‘reforming’ science and innovation, where alternative values may gain ground.

The Citizens' Visions on Science, Technology and Innovation (CIVISTI) process (Gudowsky and Sotoudeh 2017) can be considered a form of organising sociotechnical collaboration and, at the same time, providing an arena for myth identification and deconstruction. It was originally developed with the aim to identify European citizens’ visions of the future and transform these into relevant long-term science, technology and innovation issues for the EU R&D policy. Although consulting citizens is by no means new, the process was novel as it combined the sequential generation of visions by lay expertise and the checking by expert assessments, leaving the final word with the citizens. On the one hand, it tries to avoid the dominance of expert views and interests and, on the other, to keep popular projections from becoming unrealistic. Both hidden expert interests and unwarranted popular projections had been important sources of myths in the past. Through double-checking the results of each step by different forms of expertise and subjecting them to alternative views, the process aimed at a clear expression of desired futures and went some way in showing how they could be pursued.

Conclusion

Departing from Roger Pielke’s notion that society wades in a flood of (political) myths when it comes to sociotechnical innovation, we tried to show that myths are not only a nuisance, but can also yield a valuable resource for TA. At the same time, the analytical part of the TA agenda suggests that identifying and debunking myths (as far as possible) are necessary steps. Otherwise, they would distort the results of the TA process and render a skewed picture of the issue at stake. For both, understanding and debunking myths, we propose an approach informed by Roland Barthes’ classic conceptualisation, which may be adapted and, if necessary, simplified to suit the needs of TA. We think that understanding how myths come into life, how they work and what purpose they might serve facilitates their deconstruction and provides a clearer view on the issue at stake and its sociotechnical context.

This said, it is clear that we never will get rid of myths as they are a prerequisite for the appropriation of difficult or unfamiliar issues – such as novel technologies and their implications. Furthermore, identifying a myth does not necessarily abolish its power. However, (hypothetically) stripping an issue from all myths attached would render it ‘naked’, difficult to understand and to come to terms with. Therefore, new imaginaries need to be constructed around the issue through preferentially open-ended, theoretically informed and methodologically controlled sociotechnical collaborations.

The next steps would be to devise a consistent methodology for myth analysis, using appropriate examples of technological innovation. This should be combined with processes to construct novel imaginaries on foundations that are no longer hidden, but explicitly refer to the preferences and ideas of a variety of stakeholders, experts and other citizens. Apart from issues of technological innovation, such a process might even be amenable to other areas of the public sphere that are prone to be myth-ridden.

Acknowledgements

Focus groups and interviews were held under NERRI (Neuro-Enhancement and RRI, 2013–2016) and additional material collected under SYNENERGENE (2013–2017), both EU FP-7 Support Actions. Helge Torgersen thanks Martin Döring, University of Hamburg, for many fruitful discussions and previous collaboration on Roland Barthes. Valuable suggestions from the two reviewers are greatly acknowledged.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Dr. Helge Torgersen started his career as a molecular biologist at the University of Vienna. Since 1990 he has been working on GMO safety regulation, biotechnology policy, public attitudes and science and technology studies at the Institute of Technology Assessment (ITA) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

Daniela Fuchs, having completed her studies in Human Ecology, has been serving as a Junior Scientist at the Institute of Technology Assessment since 2014. Moreover, she has been working in different projects on emerging technologies such as nanotechnology, neuroenhancement and synthetic biology.

ORCID

Daniela Fuchs http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2202-1027

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the European Commission under the 7th Framework Program [grant number SiS.2012.1.2-1-321464 and SiS.2012-1.321488].

Notes

1. Both vision assessment and myth analysis build on elements of discourse analysis, but are pragmatic approaches that cannot claim its scientific rigour, which would be unfeasible in a TA context.

2. http://slideslive.com/38893099/technology-assessment-as-political-myth at 3:06.

3. For example, Hopkins et al. (2007) found no empirical evidence for the so-called biotech revolution, which allegedly had changed the pharmaceutical sector. It only existed in the promotions of academics and consultants.

4. This, according to Lévi-Strauss (1978), is how religious orthodoxy is maintained.

5. Insights derived from deconstructing the slogan of the ‘clash of civilisations’.

6. The example was Hitler’s recourse to the medieval Stauffer Emperor Friedrich II.

7. Already in the 1960s, Serge Moscovici coined the term in his ground-breaking work on the understanding of psychoanalysis in French society. The theory was then extended and applied to analyse everyday discourse (Wagner and Hayes 2005).

8. The concept may also be seen in the light of Blumenberg’s notion of prefiguration, where an issue is conveyed to a new or unknown issue, bridging the past and the present.

9. The example Barthes (1973) used in the explication of his theory was a mid-fifties cover of the journal ‘Paris Match’ displaying a young African in a French uniform saluting (to the Tricolore?). Amidst the Algerian war, it conveyed a suggestive message about French imperialism being accepted by those exposed to it.

10. This seems to contradict the role of an analyst being detached from his object. Barthes’ own consideration of this relation was ambivalent (Körte and Reulecke 2014, 19)

11. Although unfounded, decision-makers perceived the myth of ‘nanotechnology-phobia’ (Rip 2006) as a serious threat.

12. For TA, however, a full metaphor analysis would be very time-consuming (see Maasen 2000).

13. For leitbild assessment, however, mostly in retrospect, see Dierkes, Hoffmann, and Marz (1992).

14. The ‘Toblerone’ model received its name because its shape reminds of the famous Swiss chocolate bar.

15. Synthetic Biology Community website, http://syntheticbiology.org/.

16. International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) Foundation website, http://igem.org/.

17. Allegedly derived from Feynman’s last blackboard: http://archives.caltech.edu/pictures/1.10-29.jpg.

18. This function reminds of Blumenberg’s (2014) concept of ‘prefiguration’, only that in his case a historic person (the Emperor Friedrich II) served as the comparator.

19. For example, Silicon Valley tycoon Peter Thiel’s Breakout Labs initiative (https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/on-leadership/peter-thiels-life-goal-to-extend-our-time-on-this-earth/2015/04/03/b7a1779c-4814-11e4-891d-713f052086a0_story.html).

20. Expert workshops and focus groups were conducted as part of the FP7 project NERRI (03/2013 to 05/2016), which aimed at fostering the deliberation on NE between different societal actors. The NERRI consortium (18 partners in 11 countries) organised over 60 events throughout Europe as part of the Mobilisation and Mutual Learning Action Plan. An overview can be found on the project homepage (www.nerri.eu).

In Vienna, two workshops with experts from different professions (from military to physiology, selected through exploratory interviews) and four focus groups were held in 2014/2015. Focus group participants were selected on the following considerations: (i) as non-medical NE is said to create trade-offs between performance and social behaviour, a professional context where both aspects play a role was important; (ii) teachers in their daily life meet stressful situations and might consider using NE; (iii) teenagers are suspected to be more open-minded and likely to try out NE. In the end, focus groups were held with two groups of high-school teachers (approximately 10 each) and two groups of high-school students (classes of approximately 20, 16/17 years) in two different school types (business and integration) in Vienna. Information input was based on results of a literature review and explorative interviews with school personnel; the discussions covered questions of regulation, assessment, risks and ethics. Discussions were transcribed and analysed via qualitative content analysis.

21. Mostly in the USA, this also included involving stakeholders.