Imagining the future through revisiting the past: the value of history in thinking about R(R)I’s possible future(s)

ABSTRACT

Despite reflexivity being held up as a core pillar of Responsible Research and Innovation (R(R)I), actors in the field have yet to consider the importance of R(R)I's history. Acknowledging field has multiple histories, not only the ones that are told but also the ones that could be told, is necessary in order to meet the requirement of reflexivity. Inspired by the notion of ANTihistory, I therefore propose an alternative historiography. Based on ethnographic and archival research, I trace some of the interactions between early iterations of Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Technology Assessment (TA) which do not regularly feature as a part of R(R)I's established history, thereby drawing attention to potentially ‘forgotten' or ‘neglected' histories. I also propose the Appropriate Technology (AT) movement as an ‘alternative' forebear of R(R)I. I argue that the interpretative richness offered by empirical historical analysis provides insights for thinking about R(R)I’s possible future(s).

KEYWORDS:

• Responsible innovation
• responsible research and innovation
• narratives
• critical history
• reflexivity
• futures

Introduction

‘R.I.P. R.R.I.’ read the title of a session at the ECSITE conference in 2019.¹ Consisting of a ‘parody burial’, the full ritual featured a ceremony, a coffin, and a wake. Responses to the event on Twitter, included ‘#RRIexit’ (@BDMarchi, February 18, 2019) asking ‘So what’s next? IRR (irresponsible research and revolution) @vonschomberg what’s the deal now?’ (@angmgpp, February 19, 2019) These concerns reflect growing uncertainty amongst the Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) community, born out of the loss of RRI as a cross-cutting pillar of the European framework programme Horizon2020, which now reorients towards ‘Open Science’, and ‘Open Innovation’, under Horizon Europe. Will the RRI community slowly disband, turning its attention to other issues? Or, as René von Schomberg responded via Twitter: ‘Populism in the science community. People apparently enjoy burying. We continue’ (@vonschomberg, February 20, 2019).

Over the last decade, the RRI community has continued to grow, and while fears about the community’s future may not be unwarranted, Erik Fisher (2020) recently highlighted the creation, and renewal, of several national programmes. This suggests that despite fairly widespread concern about the demise of RRI as a European policy artefact, there is hope for Responsible Innovation (RI) as an ‘epistemic network’ (Rommetveit et al. 2019), or ‘scientific/intellectual movement’ (SIM) (Brundage and Guston 2019), advocating a ‘deeper institutional and systemic transformation’ (Owen and Pansera 2019a). It is worth pointing out that where the two discourses were once largely aligned in both mission, and purpose, they have since ‘progressed along increasingly divergent paths’ (Owen and Pansera 2019a, 2019b). In this article, following Smolka (2020), I use the acronym R(R)I to refer to the community as a whole, whilst acknowledging that there are clear and important distinctions between them.

Given the uncertainty regarding the future of R(R)I, this special issue presents a timely opportunity for the community to reflect upon where R(R)I goes from here. Within such reflections, the history of R(R)I has yet to be considered a valuable resource. Which poses the question, what could an empirical history of R(R)I tell us about its possible future(s)?

There have already been appeals for a more deliberate, reflexive use of history (see e.g. Kranakis 1988; Nordmann 2014; Wilsdon 2014; Zimmer-Merkle and Fleischer 2017). These appeals concern the extent to which historical cases and examples are important parts of the practice of technology assessment (TA), and R(R)I, as well as the value of historical reflection in understanding how past assessments, or forecasts, have succeeded or failed – enabling future practices to be tweaked and refined. There is, however, another way in which historical sensitivity is important. This involves going beyond the direct experience and knowledge of the R(R)I community members themselves in order to understand how R(R)I came to be, asking questions about dominant narratives, looking at how they were made relevant and mobilised at different moments, for different purposes.

R(R)I often makes a point of emphasising the importance of reflexivity, by ‘holding up a mirror to one’s own activities, commitments and assumptions’ (Stilgoe, Owen, and Macnaghten 2013, 1571). Yet there has been little reflexivity about how actors in the field arrived at their own views and positions – which is a necessary step if one is to meet the reflexivity requirement. This sort of reflexivity involves acknowledging multiple histories of the field, not only the ones that are told, but also the ones that could potentially be told. All of which is to say that there is an important, but so far neglected, role for historical thinking when it comes to thinking about the future of R(R)I.

I want to suggest that understanding R(R)I as a scientific-intellectual movement (SIM), invites a different way of looking at its histories, drawing our attention to the long term impacts and effects different movements can have. Impacts from movements in the ‘60s and ‘70s included the formation of programmes in STS, the establishment and development of TA, as well as a broader shift in public attitudes towards the value of more participatory forms of engagement – all of which are central to the agenda of R(R)I today.

Following Bernd Stahl, I approach R(R)I as a ‘meta-responsibility’, which ‘explicitly recognizes the history of RRI-related activities that should be included in the discourse’ (2013, 708). I propose that by thinking about R(R)I historically, drawing upon literature from social movements research and science and technology studies (STS), we can open up the ‘space of RRI’ (Stahl 2013), to include the experience and participation of scientists, engineers, and other practitioners who were involved in technology movements within which ideas about reform and responsibility have already been articulated in the past. Whereas focusing on the novelty of definitions deflects attention away from existing responsibility relationships; thinking about R(R)I as, ‘a responsibility for the maintenance, development, and coordination of existing responsibilities’ (708), reminds us that we can (and probably should) enrich our possible future understandings of R(R)I by turning our attention to the past.

The histories I focus on in this article build upon the notion that, ‘from an historical perspective, changes in what counts as responsible innovation can be traced back to at least the 1970s’ (Fisher 2020, 2; See Mody 2016). The late 1960s and early 1970s are a period synonymous with civic action: protests, rallies, marches, and boycotts. With regards to science and technology, collective action was often focused on issues arising from environmental degradation and the threat of nuclear war/energy – which were typically seen as oppositional movements, or examples of resistance to technology. The emergence of a number of movements at the time from within science, such as Science for the People, or the British Society for Social Responsibility in Science, also reflected growing concerns about what responsibility in science should look like (see e.g. Moore 2013; Bell 2017). Scientists entered the political arena to express their ideas, oppose technocratic policy making, and advocate alternative pathways for development in collaboration with broader social movements (Smith 2005; Hess 2007).

However, other groups also played an important role in shaping the unfolding discourse concerning technological change and development, groups that were far more ambivalent about the role of technology – but no less pro-active. In the early 1960s, as part of the Columbia University Seminar movement, participants from ‘faculties of other colleges and universities, government, business labor, the professions, various foundations and research groups, and other organizations with related interests,’ all of whom had a ‘practical as well as theoretical grasp of their subjects’ (Ginzberg 1964, 2), coalesced under the banner of ‘technology and society’. Similarly, by the end of the 1960s – also largely concentrated in the US – a coalition of scholars from various disciplines, together with key government officials, formed a movement for ‘technology assessment’. And globally, from the mid-1960s onwards, the ‘appropriate technology’ movement garnered an increasingly large following, drawing attention to the people and places involved in the development and use of technology. Interestingly, although ‘technology and society’, ‘technology assessment’, and ‘appropriate technology’ were all described as movements at the time, it is only AT which still retains that connotation today.

It would seem that without enriching our understanding of R(R)I – for example, through examining previous articulations of responsibility – it will remain difficult to transform the ideals of R(R)I into practice today. In this sense, exploring the links between R(R)I and technology movements from the 1960s and 1970s might help spark creative re-imaginings of R(R)I as we begin to think seriously about its possible future(s).

Methodology

This article is based on (ongoing) ethnographic work, conducted between 2017 and 2020. During this time, I have attempted to embed myself in the R(R)I community, becoming a participant observer at numerous workshops, courses, social labs, conferences, and project meetings. Having conducted a ‘scoping study’, through which I identified R(R)I’s historical narratives as they exist in the literature, my informal discussions with community members could be described as ‘consultation exercises’ (Arksey and O’Malley 2005). I used these consultations to inquire, test, and further explore the histories that seemed to be important to stakeholders who had a clear and vested interest in the field.

In addition to informal consultations, I conducted 18 qualitative interviews of 45–90 min with leading figures in the R(R)I community from the UK, the US, the Netherlands, Germany, Norway, and Spain. In order to trace some of the key actors and ideas which featured in the dominant histories of R(R)I, I visited eight archives during a three month visit to the US in 2019. I also accessed reports, meeting minutes, and other documents through a number of digital archives throughout the research. In conjunction with the archival work, I conducted a further 10 interviews, this time methodologically more akin to oral histories than qualitative interviews.

Based on my reading of the literature, and my ethnographic and archival research, I propose an alternative historiography of R(R)I. To this end, I have been inspired by the notion of ANTi-history. Building upon theoretical insights from the sociology of knowledge and actor network theory, ANTi-History looks at ‘how history as knowledge of the past is produced; it is interested in how human and non-human actors come to perform, and in the process, produce histories’ (Durepos and Mills 2018, 431). It is ANTi-history in that while drawing upon the ways in which ANT can inform history methodologically, it ‘goes beyond ANT’ as it ‘critiques ANT’s lack of explicit attention to history’ (432). It is at the same time ‘ante history’, in that by focusing on how history is written or performed by actors, it draws attention to the time before a given history was produced (431). ANTi-history also closely aligns with the motivations of R(R)I in that it offers a ‘hyper reflexive’ and ‘hyper transparent’ approach to history, encouraging ‘writing in, as part of the narrative itself, the social and political tactics of respective actors to describe not only what is the narrative, but also how that narrative came to be’ (432).

Before I present moments from the time before histories of R(R)I came to be, I will first outline how I draw upon SIM theory, and revisit established histories of R(R)I, as they appear in the literature. I will then draw attention to three movements in the 1960s and 1970s which all coalesced around ideas about social responsibility, and the societal implications of science and technology. I will conclude by reflecting on some of the possible lessons these movements present for the R(R)I community.

R(R)I as a scientific/intellectual movement (SIM)

Miles Brundage and David Guston (2019) have suggested that instead of understanding R(R)I as an ‘umbrella’ concept, it would be more accurate to approach it as a ‘scientific-intellectual movement’ (SIM). The ‘general theory’ of SIMs first put forward by Scott Frickel and Neil Gross (2005) synthetises existing empirical work, and is based on the assumption that there is a similarity between SIMs and social movements, particularly with regards to successful and unsuccessful movement formation. They are primarily concerned with the social conditions under which SIMs are likely to ‘emerge, gain adherents, win intellectual prestige, and ultimately acquire some level of institutional stability’ (205). Their theory is therefore situated in a larger body of work which concerns how ‘research fields, disciplines, theory groups, bandwagons, actors, and invisible colleges’, emerge in specific contexts, under particular conditions. As they suggest, the question is, how do these sorts of entities capture what Randall Collins (1998) called the ‘intellectual attention space’?

According to Frickel and Gross, there are a number of commonalities among diverse and disparate intellectual movements, which include (1) a coherent intellectual programme, which is (2) in some way ‘contentious relative to normative expectations’ within a particular domain. On this basis, they are (3) ‘inherently political’, as they involve the reconfiguration of positions, and a competition for scarce resources. They are (4) ‘constituted through organized collective action’, which requires ‘spatial, temporal, and social coordination’. They are (5) ‘episodic phenomena’, with a finite lifespan, where the

birth of a SIM often is marked by the announcement of a bold new intellectual program, and its death either by the effective disappearance of the movement from the intellectual scene or by its transformation into a more stable institutionalized form such as a school of thought, subfield, or discipline.

Finally, they (6) typically vary in ‘intellectual aim and scope’, ranging from ambitious to modest, progressive to reactionary (206–208).

Brundage and Guston point out that the way in which community members mobilised R(R)I’s prehistory in their interviews corresponded with theorising about SIMs, highlighting that, ‘much of the recent intellectual output of R(R)I scholars has focused on theorizing the prehistory of R(R)I and locating its unique contribution (or lack thereof) in this context’ (2019, 104). This, as they explain, is ‘a common occurrence for SIMs that seek to situate themselves in a prestigious history and to figure themselves as the next step in an evolutionary trajectory’ (104). History was also commonly used in order to justify the need for R(R)I based upon the shortcomings, or failures, of its predecessors. Here, Brundage and Guston highlight how ‘SIMs typically feature significant contestation of the knowledge core that they are orientated towards, and much of their activity involves (re)articulating that core’ (106).

By focusing on how history is used by the R(R)I community, outside of the literature, Brundage and Guston show how these histories have been taken up as a way of making sense of where R(R)I fits in a complex ecology of interrelated ideas and concepts. Their analysis demonstrates how narratives of R(R)I are typically mobilised in order to provide legitimacy or justification. But crucially, as I would add, not as a tool for critical reflection.

The theory of SIMs as put forward by Frickel and Gross concentrates on how movements emerge, consolidate, and develop. If, following Brundage and Guston, we assume that R(R)I does fit the criteria of a SIM, a pertinent question – especially when thinking about the future – would concern the impact or effects of SIMs over time. There are four kinds of external impacts a social movement can have: procedural (changes to rules, laws, or policies), substantive (changes to the material environment), structural (changes in institutional structures), and sensitising (changes to the political agenda and/or public attitudes) (Giugni 1995; Van Der Heijden 1999).

Given the considerable similarities between SIMs and social movements with regards to their emergence and formation, it would seem safe to assume that there are also similarities with regards to their impacts and effects. After summarising some of the established histories of R(R)I in the next section, I then suggest that these histories hint at some of the lasting impacts of interrelated movements that were active throughout the 1960s and 1970s. This suggests that a better understanding of these movements might be heuristically useful when it comes to thinking about the long term effects of R(R)I.

Established histories of R(R)I

R(R)I undoubtedly has a ‘rich history’ including (but not limited to): ‘science and technology studies’, ‘technology assessment – in all its forms’, ‘anticipatory governance’, ‘upstream engagement’, ‘socio-technical integration’, ‘value sensitive design’, ‘ethical parallel research’, ‘engineering ethics’, ‘bioethics’ and work on the ‘Ethical, Legal and Social Aspects (ELSA) of scientific and technological developments’ (Grunwald 2011; Owen, Bessant, and Heintz 2013; Doorn et al. 2014; Zwart, Landeweerd, and Van Rooij 2014; Forsberg 2015; Özdemir 2019).

Histories of R(R)I are typically based on existing narratives regarding the evolution of key developments such as these. However, critical reflection on these histories demonstrates the potential for neglected narratives to also be considered a part of R(R)I’s broader intellectual history. Turning to the 1960s and 1970s, for example, draws attention to networks that existed across presumed boundaries between the academy, policy-making, and civil society. Indeed, actors were themselves often a part of more than one group – which is of course still very much the case today.

Historians of science and technology have examined the 1960s and 1970s as a time when scientists and engineers tried to navigate the complex and changing relationship between science, technology, and society (see e.g. Agar 2008; Turner 2010; Moore et al. 2011; Nordmann, Radder, and Schiemann 2011; Kaiser 2012; Wisnioski 2012; Moore 2013; Quet 2014; Kaiser and Patrick McCray 2016; King and Levidow 2016; Mody 2016, 2017; Egan 2017; Graf 2017; Heymann 2017). Critiques of this period, especially by people of colour, have also drawn attention to the role of marginalised groups and political movements who played an important role in shaping societal attitudes towards science and technology at the time (see e.g. Fouché 2006; Nelson 2011; Blount and Molina 2019). These histories have yet to be taken up as a relevant part of the story of R(R)I, and reflection upon the role of history within the discourse and practice of R(R)I has been scarce.

The period between 1965 and 1975 is often highlighted as important, as during this time thinking more critically about technological developments really began to take hold throughout society (Kasper 1972; Dickson 1988; Rip 1999; Cutcliffe 2000). The story is well known: civic action prompted by the war in Vietnam, an increasing awareness of the dangers of environmental pollution, concerns about the development of nuclear power plants, – these were among the myriad of reasons why the relationship between science, technology, and society came under increasing scrutiny.

Intellectuals began publishing broad critical treatises on the relationship between technology and society, which also catalysed societal reflection more widely (e.g. Ellul 1964; Marcuse 1964; Mumford 1967; Roszak 1969, etc.). In addition, publications like Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) or Ralph Nader’s Unsafe at Any Speed (1965) highlighted specific environmental and safety concerns regarding particular technological developments. However, it was not only headline grabbing best-sellers that shaped conversations at the time. As Matthew Wisnioski (2012) has pointed out, ‘it is difficult to overstate the profusion of ink spilled about the nature of technology in the 1960s’. Indeed, in the early 1960s, ‘a new genre of technology & society writing emerged that cut across academic disciplines, political positions, and popular audiences’ (42).

Within histories of R(R)I, references to this period are not uncommon, in fact quite the opposite is true. However, references briefly refer to the same roll call of authors, glossing over what was actually a ‘comparably heterogeneous group of commentators’ (53). In the remainder of this article, I will zoom in on moments when this group came together to negotiate ideas about ‘social responsibility’ and the ‘societal implications of science and technology’, under the banners of ‘technology and society’, ‘technology assessment’, and ‘appropriate technology’.

Revisiting the past: technology and society

In 1945, Columbia University ‘unveiled a bold experiment’, the creation of which was based on the question: ‘Could experts of all sorts, drawn from many a campus and the world at large, convene periodically to cut across specialties and, through discussion about important topics, learn a thing or two?’ (Vinciguerra 2020, 1). The University Seminar movement, led by the historian Frank Tannenbaum, sought to provide a form of ‘intellectual outreach’. At a time when many were concerned about increasing specialisation going on within the academy following the end of World War 2, Tannenbaum and his colleagues saw the need for thematically organised forums based on a ‘holistic’ philosophy which prioritised cross-fertilisation and the sharing of expertise (Tannenbaum 1965).

In 1945, the experiment started out with 5 seminars, and by 1965 that number had grown to 39. In principle, anyone could propose a new seminar. Following the provisos that the topic be a matter of ‘going concern’, that it lay ‘beyond the province’ of any one department, discipline, school, or faculty, and that there was enough interest in the topic in neighbouring institutions, in industry, and in society. In 1962, a small group of scientists and engineers from International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) approached Tannenbaum with a view to create a new seminar entitled, ‘Technology and Social Change’. According to one seminar participant, they had felt it was necessary ‘to create a dialogue between those developing new technological systems – the computer scientists and the systems engineers – and those responsible for helping man to live in a new machine-created environment – the social scientists’ (Tannenbaum 1965, 138).

In its first year, prospective participants selected seminar topics via questionnaire. The theme for each subsequent year was based upon recurring topics and questions from the year before. Following dinner, each month, an invited speaker would briefly present their ideas on an agreed topic, discussion would then be opened up to all present. The Technology and Social Change seminar, more than any other, prided itself on bringing together ‘diverse individuals’ from university administration, government, the business community, and from various academic disciplines. Though the participants were largely men, the diversity in terms of their bodies of expertise, resulted in ‘vastly different orientations and vantage points’ (Ginzberg 1964, 7). At the end of the first year, there was found to be sufficient interest to warrant publication of a book, and the seminar pioneered publishing their proceedings under the imprint of Columbia University Press.

The Columbia Seminar preceded ideas about ‘consensus conferences’, or ‘stakeholder engagement’, which only emerged much later, emphasising the importance of interdisciplinary and intersectional dialogue regarding technological development. The emphasis on interdisciplinarity was a key talking point throughout the Seminar. For example, Harvey Brooks, Dean of Engineering and Applied Science at Harvard, suggested that when it came to making decisions about the potential impacts of technological developments, ‘the natural scientist doesn’t know, and the political scientist doesn’t know’. He continued to say, ‘the only mechanism I’ve been able to discover for arriving at these judgements is the good old-fashioned method of arguing’, stressing that ‘as many different kinds of people have to be brought into the argument as possible’ (Brooks 1965, 48).

In attempting to provide a forum for such arguments, where repetition, contradiction and conflict were not only expected, but actively welcomed, difficulties encountered within the Seminar were twofold: they were born out of the lack of clear definitions with regards to the main objects of discussion (technology and social change), which led to disagreements about the appropriate approaches for investigating the relationship between them. What began as an invitation for openness, avoiding concrete definitions so as to enrol multiple perspectives, often became a barrier with regards to agreeing upon appropriate courses of action.

Despite the apparent lack of consensus however, the technology and society movement soon grew and expanded beyond the walls of Columbia. Being held monthly, the Seminar provided a regular opportunity for individuals to network, between and across their formal institutional ties. The published proceedings from the Seminar travelled widely, and the Seminar's method of work as ‘a research policy workshop’ was thought to be deserving of ‘special attention outside the United States’ (Dedijer 1965, 1707). Though widely ignored within histories of STS, the Columbia Seminar also played a crucial role in providing the necessary institutional foothold and financial support required in order for more formalised programmes to emerge. Not least because of the large contingent from IBM, amongst them, Charles DeCarlo, IBM’s Director of Education.

Though typically considered a part of the technocratic elite, DeCarlo often spoke publicly about the need to develop humane technologies that paid attention to the ‘subjective world of feelings, values, and the many qualitative aspects of life not susceptible to measurement or mathematical manipulation’ (DeCarlo 1964, 11). Though wary of the term ‘interdisciplinarity,’ DeCarlo was vocal in his support of new research that would help to cut across the ‘two cultures’ divide. It seems likely, therefore, that he would have played a central role in IBM’s decision to grant $5 million to Harvard University in 1964 for the creation of a new programme entitled ‘Technology and Society’.

According to Harvard President Nathan M. Pusey, the major objective of the Harvard programme was ‘to help to understand the social conditions and public policies that foster scientific and technological progress, and then influence its direction’ (Harvard Press Release 1965). Notably, the programme’s publications became required reading in over 200 colleges and thousands of copies of its annual reports were sent out to government offices and corporations. As a result, the programme soon became the ‘most prominent voice in the debate about technology in the 1960s’ (Wisnioski, 56).

While the Harvard programme was terminated two years earlier than planned, in 1972, for reasons that remain largely speculative, some observers believed the programme had been an ‘interesting and promising experiment’ (Long 1972, 777). At least, that was the view of the co-founder of the Cornell Science, Technology, and Society programme, Franklin Long, who also described the Harvard programme as the ‘earliest’ of its kind, and a pioneer in what would soon become ‘a well-trodden path’ (777). He suggested that ‘most of the later starters (Cornell for one) had tried to emulate its successes and to learn from its difficulties’ (777). Other similar efforts included those at Pennsylvania State University (1968/69), Stanford University (1970/71), Lehigh University (1972), and MIT (1977). By the mid 1970s, American universities had embraced the term ‘Science, Technology, and Society’, and a number of courses were underway on campuses across the country. Fueled by the times, these courses had a heavy focus on the contemporary politics of science and technology, and were intended to raise students’ awareness of the need for greater responsibility in the uses and applications of science outside of the laboratory.

As Jasanoff (2016) explains, reflecting broad normative orientations, early American STS, ‘was broadly configured as a space for research and teaching to illuminate the social and political implications of society’s technological choices and thereby improve the politics of technical decisions’ (231). At Cornell, this meant both reconsidering the link between universities and society, where academic groups began thinking about how they could apply their skills to ‘rather basic non-academic problems’ (for example, trash collection in New York City), as well as dealing with ‘problems of linkages within a university’, where science, technology and society programmes were an attempt to answer increasing demands regarding the ‘relevance of education’ (Anonymous 1972, 1).

The establishment of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) in 1975, represented a moment of self-realisation for the nascent field (Jasanoff 2000; Dear and Jasanoff 2010). The society’s creation relied on parallel developments on both sides of the Atlantic, particularly in Edinburgh, the creation of the journal Science Studies in 1971, and at Harvard, the Newsletter of the Program on Public Conceptions of Science in 1972 – what would later become Science, Technology, and Human Values. Despite such developments, and though science, technology, and society courses were widely successful at first, many of them ‘ran out of steam’ by the late 1980s, ‘having failed to meet the tests of rigor, appeal, relevance, and coherence required for long-term academic survival’ (Jasanoff 2000).

Though STS would gain ground again in the 1990s, by that time, it had lost touch with the ‘technology and society’ movement which had initially been composed of scientists, engineers, and members of the business community. Many of the early developments in STS were largely possible thanks to their involvement, and can be seen as a result of the substantive and sensitising impacts of the wider ‘technology and society’ movement throughout the 1960s. What started out as a messy, ill-defined movement, broadly held together by an interest in ‘technology and society’, soon splintered into different factions within the emerging field of STS, reflected by the ‘floating ampersand’ (Jasanoff 2016). Where Science and technology studies (S&TS), was more focused ‘on the nature and practices of science and technology’ (as initially led by sociologists in the UK); science, technology and society (ST&S) was more concerned with ‘the impacts and control of science and technology’ (as initially led by scientists and legislators in the U.S.) (192). These different starting points have been used to characterise what are often seen as two distinct branches of STS, which over time have blended together, each being considered as important constituent parts of the field (see e.g. Rip 1979; Cutcliffe 2000; Sismondo 2011; Jasanoff 2016).

Revisiting the past: technology assessment

In 1969, the National Academy of Sciences was commissioned by Democratic Congressman Emilio Daddario’s subcommittee on Science, Research, and Development to produce a report setting out some basic principles underscoring the notion of technology assessment. The Academy turned to its Committee on Science and Public Policy (COSPUP), chaired by Harvey Brooks. The panel Brooks put together, relied heavily on the network of Columbia seminar participants, and those enrolled into the broader ‘technology and society’ movement, including Cornell programme co-founder, Raymond Bowers, and Columbia Seminar participants like the sociologist Norman Kaplan, and the historian Melvin Kranzberg.

At a two-day seminar on technology assessment held two years earlier, Daddario had announced his intention to launch ‘a long-term project to develop a new capability for the legislative process’ (US Congress 1967, 2). He explained that ultimately ‘the purpose of assessment’ was to ‘enable decisions for the public good’ (2). However, it was not scientists and engineers that he turned to initially, (as he considered them to be in ‘need of help’, and ‘floundering around’). Instead, Daddario invited the ‘pioneering’ leaders of ‘impact studies,’ which, he suggested, were characterised by the terms ‘science and culture’ and ‘technology and society’ (2–4). The seminar thus brought together the ‘outstanding leaders’ of these projects, including individuals from the fields of philosophy, history, and policy studies, many of whom had participated in the Columbia Seminar – amongst them, the Harvard programme director Emmanuel Mesthene.

During the TA seminar, participants concluded that TA should have an explicit focus on the ‘secondary effects of technology’, and that TA should systematically examine the ‘goals and priorities’ of society, in order that it might suggest ‘alternatives for accomplishing a given goal’ (174). Other points similarly resonate with ongoing discussions within R(R)I. They concerned negotiating the goals and purpose of a new mechanism, making information publicly available, creating forums for dialogue, and potentially informing the creation of national goals.

Daddario stressed that TA should serve as a mechanism which could help society deal with so-called ‘knotty questions’, such as, ‘where should the emphasis of support be placed in the long scientific range from abstract research to ultimate application?’ and ‘who should direct the selection of goals?’ (US Congress 1966, 4). In today’s thinking, knotty questions bear some resemblance to ‘wicked problems’ and ‘grand challenges’ – both of which play an important role in the discourse of R(R)I. The reorientation away from ‘questions’ towards a focus on ‘challenges’, is indicative of a broader shift in innovation policies away from ‘mission-oriented’ research (e.g. the Manhattan Project or the Apollo programme), towards broader ambitions associated with ideas about ‘transformative change’.

Histories of TA tend to frame its early iterations as a top-down, policy led initiative. However, Daddario’s initial ambitions for the concept of TA were far loftier. He envisaged a more collaborative way of doing science and technology policy and was keen to invite engagement with and beyond the scientific community. Described as having ‘earned a reputation among scientists as a man who knows what he is talking about’ (The Atlanta Journal 1970), when he first entered Congress in the late 1950s, dialogue between the scientific community and Congress was scarce, and the national agencies ‘only dealt with Congress at arm’s length’ (Hechler 1980, 138). Daddario, recognising the need for ‘stronger’ and ‘more personal bridges’, began attending meetings of the various scientific societies, and soon found himself being invited to deliver keynotes and prepare commentaries for specialised publications. He followed the Columbia Seminar closely, and when the Harvard programme was established in 1964, he was invited to become a member of the steering committee.

The year the Technology Assessment Act was passed, in 1972, a number of conferences were already being held on the subject of TA: in the US, the third Engineering Foundation Conference in New Haven; in Austria, the fourth Salzburg Assembly: Impact of New Technology (SAINT) conference; and in Italy, a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) conference was also centred upon discussions regarding TA. Given that the SAINT and NATO conferences were held at the same time, some participants even earned themselves the title of international conference-hopper, dashing back and forth across the Alps to attend both meetings. A year later in 1973, the year the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) became operational, the International Society of Technology Assessment (ISTA) – established in 1971 – held a conference in The Hague. One participant described the proceedings from the conference as a ‘snapshot of TA in 1973’, documenting the period through which the field ‘was born and grew through adolescence to the vigor of young professionalism’ (Knight 1976, vii).

In contrast to histories of R(R)I which typically cite 1972 as the moment when TA emerged, the fact that the ISTA conference drew over 200 participants from 20 different countries in 1973 gives some idea of the scale of the ‘technology assessment’ movement in the early 1970s (Knight 1976). By this time several universities were already offering seminars and modules on TA, one of the first of which was the Program of Policy Studies in Science and Technology at George Washington University established in 1966. Throughout the 1960s, Daddario successfully channelled the momentum of the ‘technology assessment’ movement towards achieving structural and procedural impacts within Congress in the early 1970s. At the same time, the ISTA conference in 1973 could be seen as an ‘informal transnational institutionalisation of the TA movement’ (51), which far from being new in 1972, had been gradually growing for almost a decade.

Revisiting the past: appropriate technology

In the early 1970s, the AT movement drew upon the same networks of individuals and organisations who shaped early initiatives in STS and TA. These networks provided support and resources for AT, as another important channel through which scientists, engineers, social scientists, and legislators tried to make sense of the changing landscape with regards to the relationship between technology and society. Members of the AT community championed technology choice, advocating that technology development be approached in new ways, for example promoting technologies that addressed social needs through engagement, challenging the way innovation processes were understood at the time. While mounting pressures from activists and social movements brought concerns about environmentalism and social justice to the table, it was the AT movement that acted as the ‘harbinger of technology choice as a policy concept’ and which ‘provided the main source of literature on the subject’ (Willoughby 1990, 10).

As with STS and TA, histories of AT tend to place its emergence in the early 1970s, specifically 1973, which saw the publication of E.F. Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful. However, like STS and TA, AT was also several years in the making. For example, in 1965 Schumacher created the Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG) in the UK, alongside Julia Porter and George McRobie. Schumacher’s ideas about ‘intermediate technology’ were born out of his experiences working for the National Coal Board in the UK, particularly from his travels to Burma in 1955, where he worked as an economic consultant (Ward 1984). Having witnessed first-hand the inability of small communities to transition from traditional, small-scale ways of working, to high-tech, industrialised production, Schumacher advocated the creation of self-reliant economies. Combining philosophy, economics and environmentalism, he argued for a system which would empower people to make their own technological choices by providing ‘intermediate’ alternatives. He wrote that the only way to enable environmental and human sustainability was to create technologies with ‘a human face’ and an economic system that was people-centered (Schumacher 1973).

The approach adopted by ITDG in 1965 closely resembled that of an organisation based in the US, which had itself emerged several years earlier, in 1959. The Volunteers in Technical Assistance (VITA), was created by a small group of scientists and engineers, employees from the General Electric (GE) Company, who were astonished to discover that the budget for the United Nations’ (U.N.) expanded programme of technical assistance amounted to roughly the same money being paid to all engineers and scientists employed by GE. The group formed a local chapter and made inquiries into what they might do to help. They began receiving requests from local charities for technical advice, and in 1960, the US Agency for International Development (A.I.D) contacted the group, taking out a contract for a study on solar cookers.

The group then formed VITA, and began increasing their publicity, as well as recruiting a part-time secretary and more volunteers. As VITA co-founder Bob Walker wrote in a letter to Harvey Brooks, ‘it was shortly after this that we began to realize that we had a real bear by the tail. Technical problems flowed in, as did volunteers’ (Walker 1965). Walker wrote that far from ‘trying to impose solutions,’ VITA concentrated on ‘person-to-person contact’ in order to achieve ‘practical results’.

Harvey Brooks, himself a former GE employee, was originally contacted by VITA, in order that he might lend his name to the organisation. He became a spokesmen of sorts, making introductions to potential backers, and addressing audiences at key functions. He played a substantial role in helping VITA gain the attention of a number of high-status individuals – many of whom had been participants at Columbia, or panellists on his TA panel. For Brooks, AT complemented the work being done within the corridors of power, both in government as well as in the academy, in the sense that it prompted a reflection and revaluation on the content and direction of science and technology policy.

Articles about VITA echoed the concerns within the TA movement, and broader concerns about the ability of ‘conventional’ technological solutions to be responsive to societal needs. An article in The National Observer had the tag-line: ‘Leisure Time of Skilled Technicians Brings Answers to Knotty Problems’ (Kennedy 1965). While in The New York Times, Brendan Jones wrote ‘problems, problems, problems … not how to get to the moon or program a computer, but how to build a low-cost irrigation pump or local source to fill simple technological needs in developing countries’ (Jones 1969). Dealing with these problems necessitated different strategies than were being pursued by Daddario and those involved in the conceptualisation of TA. However, while different, both movements drew upon a similar knowledge base, with the same emphasis on interdisciplinary collaboration and dialogue. For example, project teams at VITA typically consisted of ‘physicists, engineers, physicians, architects, sociologists, anthropologists, bookkeepers, geologists, food technologists, teachers, and research chemists’ (Kennedy 1965).

By 1968 VITA had affiliated groups working in Britain, Argentina, India, Canada, the Philippines, Taiwan, Australia, Mexico, the Netherlands Germany and Peru, and in 1969, VITA-USA was commissioned by the Office of Economic Opportunity to also turn its attention closer to home. Slowly, VITA was able to overcome the ‘chilly attitudes’ of companies who were initially reticent when it came to allowing their employees to work for free for other people. It helped that industry giants like GE and IBM were among the ‘VITA boosters’, offering free computer time and allowing engineers to work on VITA projects as well as donating operating money.

Through the course of the 1970s, AT grew from just 2 affiliated organisations to over 1000 by the end of the decade (Jécquier and Blanc 1983). This was echoed by a growth in the number of articles, magazines, directories, workshops, and conferences globally. AT was also taken up widely by large development institutions such as the U.N., the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and the World Bank, as well as by technical universities and engineering schools across the US and Europe (Macekura 2015). Unlike the movements discussed so far, which were based on a considerable amount of discussion and negotiation before they began to see any real impact, AT was largely a practice-based movement from the start: at VITA and ITDG; at all of the numerous organisations that followed; even when AT was taken up by universities, there was little theorising – at least initially – undergirding AT. According to some this was to be AT’s Achilles' heel (see e.g. Willoughby 1990). By the late 1980s AT groups and organisations had either ceased to exist or at least appeared to have lost their momentum. Yet, according to the historian Carroll Pursell, the rise and fall of AT can be explained simply by the fact that its existence was bookended by a period ‘of social ferment and reform at one end, and the Reagan years at the other’ (1993, 629).

Although AT appears at first blush to be the least successful of the movements discussed, one could also argue that the long term impacts of AT are only just coming into view. Given recent discussions within the R(R)I community, which advocate a shift in focus from ‘innovation’ to ‘stagnation’ (de Saille et al. 2020), or which promote the need to critically question the need for constant innovation, the philosophy and practices of the AT movement appear to resonate with contemporary ideas around maintaining, tinkering, doing-it-yourself, and other strategies to circumvent the so-called ‘innovation delusion’ (Vinsel and Russell 2020). Given these recent developments, and that it was in and through collaborations between scientists, engineers, policy makers, and scholars that not only ideas about AT, but also STS and TA first began to emerge, AT would seem to be a relevant historical lens not only for thinking about how R(R)I came to be, but also for what it could potentially be going forwards.

Conclusion

Like early STS and TA, AT also relied heavily on the involvement of scientists and engineers, as well as industrial giants like IBM and GE. Unlike anti-technology movements, AT was proactive, championing deep reflection on the relationship between technology and society both within the academy, as well as with regards to science and technology policy. Though initially STS and TA developed primarily in the Global North, ‘grassroots’ AT was, from the outset, a global affair with organisations emerging on every continent throughout the 1970s. Though the examples discussed here have largely concentrated on the US, I have hinted at the ways in which these movements were a part of wider, transnational networks.

While STS, TA, and AT were fundamentally different approaches, they all emerged as responses to the shifting relationship between technology and society during the ‘60s and ‘70s. I have argued that thinking about R(R)I from the perspective of ANTi-history demonstrates the value of looking at R(R)I’s pre-history, while thinking about R(R)I as a SIM, as initially suggested by Brundage and Guston, opens up new ways of thinking about that pre-history. Revisiting R(R)I’s histories draws attention to neglected or overlooked developments which are also a key part of the narratives widely considered central to the evolution of R(R)I – within which reflection is a necessary requirement.

I have also argued that R(R)I can be seen as a legacy of various technology movements that emerged in the 1960s. These movements included what has been considered the more explicitly political, responsive strand of STS, in terms of its more explicit normative commitments, as well as its relationship to policy-making, education, and civil society. They also included the TA movement, which as we have seen, extended far beyond the simple notion of ‘classical TA’ or the initial reach of OTA. Within the TA movement, at conferences and workshops, there was considerable discussion and negotiation about the goals and aims of TA, as well as the pros and cons of public participation. While out of the three AT may be the most likely to be considered a social movement, AT was still far from traditional in the sense that, unlike movements against nuclear war, or environmental degradation (which also influenced early STS scholars), AT rarely orchestrated boycotts or organised marches. Instead, AT drew upon the example of organisations like VITA and ITDG, sharing knowledge and expertise through publishing pamphlets, fact sheets and ‘how-to-do-it’ instructions, making them as widely available as possible through the creation of extensive informal networks.

The groups I have brought together under the broad umbrella of ‘technology movements’, have often been crudely characterised as populated by technocrats and ‘tech-fixers’ on the one side and idealists and ‘hippies’ on the other. However, the examples discussed above demonstrate that many, if not most of the actors involved, sat somewhere in the middle – not unlike many working within R(R)I today. Indeed, as these examples also demonstrate, many of those involved participated in multiple movements, highlighting that these seemingly different movements were often deeply entangled. Which poses the question as to whether the same can be said for R(R)I today? Are there connections between R(R)I and other movements similarly oriented towards transforming the analysis, evaluation, and practices of technological change? If so, how might the practices and strategies of these movements inform the R(R)I community when it comes to imagining the future?

Perhaps the apparent lack of links between R(R)I and other movements can in part be explained through its success as a SIM, where one of its early goals was to grow and develop within the academic/intellectual space. Another explanation, is that as a SIM, the R(R)I community is largely made up of scholars operating in a neoliberal context, and that links with movements outside of the academy might already exist, but are often pushed out by formal requirements at the academic level. In any case, it is important for the R(R)I community to critically engage with such questions, especially while the future remains uncertain.

By introducing ANTi-history as a valuable approach for thinking about R(R)I, I have drawn attention to the impacts of technology movements in the ‘60s and ‘70s which still resonate within R(R)I today. I have suggested that greater attention to the sorts of neglected histories discussed herein could enrich R(R)I, enabling a deeper understanding of how and why R(R)I came to be, as well as encouraging reflection upon the ways in which our thinking about possible future worlds is restricted or enabled by the ways in which different histories are told. By bringing lesser known histories of R(R)I into the foreground, I have argued that the interpretative richness offered by empirical historical analysis can, and should, provide insights for thinking about R(R)I’s possible future(s), as we begin to think seriously about where R(R)I goes from here.

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank the librarians and archivists at the Special Collections & Archives of Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT, USA, and of the Harvard University Archives, Pusey Library, Cambridge, MA. The author would also like to thank all members of the R(R)I community who contributed to this research by kindly sharing their thoughts and reflections with her regarding the history of R(R)I at various events since 2017—particular thanks to those who also gave their time to be interviewed for the project. Thanks also to my supervisors Cyrus Mody and Darryl Cressman, and colleagues Rachel Allison and Ricky Janssen for helpful advice and comments while developing this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Maastricht University.

Notes on contributors

Danielle Shanley

Danielle Shanley is a PhD candidate in the History Department at Maastricht University and a member of the Maastricht University Science and Technology Studies (MUSTS) research group. Her current PhD project looks at the history of ideas surrounding responsible innovation in a global context.

Notes

1 The ECSITE network brings together over 350 science centres and museums. A description of the session can be found on their website: Accessed September 14, 2020. from https://www.ecsite.eu/activities-and-services/ecsite-events/conferences/sessions/rip-rri.