Tag Archives: Franz Seifert

Call for Papers: NanoEthics (special issue): After the hype is before the hype (Deadline for proposals: May 5, 2019)

I got the notice for this special issue of NanoEthics (After the hype is before the hype) in my email this morning (April 16, 2019). Not being familiar with the journal I did a little searching.

NanoEthics (a Springer journal):

Studies of New and Emerging Technologies
Editor-in-Chief: Christopher Coenen
ISSN: 1871-4757 (print version)
ISSN: 1871-4765 (electronic version)
Journal no. 11569
…
Provides a needed forum for informed discussion of ethical and social concerns related to nanotechnology

Counterbalances fragmented, opinionated public discussion

Discussion is informed by the physical, biological and social sciences and the law
Nanoscale technologies are surrounded by both hype and fear. Optimists suggest they are desperately needed to solve problems of terrorism, global warming, clean water, land degradation and public health. Pessimists fear the loss of privacy and autonomy, “grey goo” and weapons of mass destruction, and unforeseen environmental and health risks. Concern over fair distribution of the costs and benefits of nanotechnology is also rising
Introduced in 2007, [emphasis mine] NanoEthics: Ethics for Technologies that Converge at the Nanoscale provides a needed forum for informed discussion of ethical and social concerns related to nanotechnology, and a counterbalance to fragmented popular discussion.
While the central focus of the journal is on ethical issues, discussion extends to the physical, biological and social sciences and the law. NanoEthics provides a philosophically and scientifically rigorous examination of ethical and societal considerations and policy concerns raised by nanotechnology.

Abstracted/Indexed in
Science Citation Index Expanded (SciSearch), Journal Citation Reports/Science Edition, Social Science Citation Index, Journal Citation Reports/Social Sciences Edition, SCOPUS, INSPEC, Google Scholar, AGRICOLA, Current Contents / Social & Behavioral Sciences, EBSCO Academic Search, EBSCO Book Review Digest Plus (H.W. Wilson) , EBSCO Discovery Service, EBSCO Humanities Full Text (H.W. Wilson), EBSCO Humanities International, EBSCO Humanities Source, EBSCO Nanotechnology Collection: India , EBSCO OmniFile Full Text (H.W. Wilson), EBSCO STM Source, EBSCO TOC Premier, ERIH PLUS, Ethicsweb, Expanded Academic, Gale, Gale Academic OneFile, Humanities Abstracts, Humanities Index, Materials Business File-Steels Alerts, Mechanical and Transportation Engineering Abstracts, OCLC WorldCat Discovery Service, ProQuest ABI/INFORM, ProQuest Advanced Technologies & Aerospace Database, ProQuest Business Premium Collection, ProQuest Central, ProQuest Health & Medical Collection, ProQuest Health Research Premium Collection, ProQuest Materials Science & Engineering Database, ProQuest Philosophy Database, ProQuest Science Database, ProQuest SciTech Premium Collection, ProQuest Technology Collection, ProQuest-ExLibris Primo, ProQuest-ExLibris Summon, Solid State and Superconductivity Abstracts, The Philosopher’s Index

Here’s the text from the April 16, 2019 email announcement,

Dear colleagues!

We invite papers for a special issue in the journal “NanoEthics: Studies
of New and Emerging Technologies”.

AFTER THE HYPE IS BEFORE THE HYPE – FROM BIO TO NANO TO AI: WHAT CAN
WE LEARN FROM PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT IN NANOSCIENCES AND NANOTECHNOLOGIES?

Since the early 2000’s, Nanosciences and nanotechnologies (NST) have
been massively promoted in many parts of the world. Two things were
striking about these policies: first, the hype surrounding NST; second,
the prominence of public engagement–citizen dialogue, deliberation and
participation–in NST discourse and policy. Nanotechnology became a
laboratory for the programmatic and practical development of a range of
forms of public engagement such as “upstream” and “midstream
engagement”, or policy approaches that prominently integrate public
engagement such as “anticipatory governance”, “real-time technology
assessment”, or “responsible research and innovation”.

From bio to nano: A major reason for this noticeable rise of public
engagement in NST are the food scandals and technology controversies in
the late 1990’s, in particular the controversy over genetically modified
organisms (GMOs). These controversies came to be seen as the result of
elites’ reductionist and arrogant approach to the public. To avoid a
similar public backlash against NST authorities and decision-makers in
science and politics should open doors for public engagement and humble
dialogue. Obviously, the public crisis around GMOs had triggered a
learning process.

From nano to AI: Today, the hype surrounding NST has waned and so have
concerns that nanotechnology might fall prey to a public backlash.
Nothing comparable to the public backlash against GMOs ever happened to
Nano. In fact, NST hardly became controversial. Meanwhile, new
technology hypes pervade the public discourse. Synthetic biology,
genetic editing or Artificial Intelligence (AI) are recent examples. In
each case, we observe parallels to the discourses on public engagement
in NST. In the case of AI, for example, prominent researchers and think
tanks warn against a public backlash if policy makers and funders fail
to foster public support through public engagement.

From bio to nano to AI: We suggest that social learning processes
intertwined with technology hypes pervade these and other arenas of
technology governance. While the GM controversy had a visible (albeit
not yet fully understood) effect on the NST field, today, we ask which
lessons can be drawn – and have been drawn by science policy actors –
from the NST field? Where do we stand today after 20 years of public
engagement in nanotechnology and other emerging technologies, and what
is there to learn for the “new governance” of most recently hyped
technologies such as AI?

POSSIBLE TOPICS INCLUDE:

Societal effects and social learnings of Public Engagement (PE)

–       How can we conceptualize the social learning processes which
seem to manifest in technology governance over the past twenty years?
Have new patterns of interpretation been established regarding the
nature of a successful or failed technology governance? If so, how can
they be described and distinguished from the “old” patterns of
interpretation?

–       Does the fact that NST mostly remained uncontroversial mean that
the early emphasis on public engagement in the NST field made it more
“socially robust”, “democratic” and “reflexive”? Have the right
“lessons” been drawn (from the past for the future)?

–       Why and how does the trend toward public engagement manifest
itself in different national political cultures? How did certain public
engagement formats travel across national borders in the NST policy
field?

PE between hype and reflexivity

–       What happens after the hype? With enthusiastic/dystopian
discourse subsiding, do public engagement activities also vane? What
happened to the engagement hype and to ambitious policy metaphors such
as “upstream engagement”? Have they been forgotten? Will they reappear,
or be reinvented, with the next big techno hype?

–       For the social sciences nanotechnology has provided an
opportunity to step up research and policy intervention. How can the
role/agency of the social sciences in public engagement processes be
conceptualized? In which way has this role changed in the past 20 years?
Which role conflicts or normative dilemmas arise from it?

PE between strategic and transformative uses

–       Did public engagement (ever) make a difference in the governance
of NST or other emerging technologies? How have public engagement
initiatives been integrated (or ignored) in the governance of NST and
other emerging technologies?

–       Has public engagement had identifiable impacts on policies or
institutions related to NST or other fields of technoscientific
discourse and policy? Did public engagement have the effect of
problematizing, shifting or even reshaping epistemic and political
demarcation lines between the public, scientific expertise and policy
subsystems? What can we expect for the future?

Several formats are available. We specifically invite original research
papers. In addition, contributions can come in the form of shorter
discussion notes, communications and responses, letters, art-science
interactions, interviews or anecdotes, and book reviews.

SCHEDULE

Proposals: May 5th 2019

First Draft: August 31st 2019

Final draft: January 31st 2020

Please, send proposals to both Franz Seifert (fseifert@gmx.at) and
Camilo Fautz (c.fautz@mailbox.org)

Not being familiar with either of the organizers, I also searched for them online.

Franz Seifert has been an independent social scientist since 2000 according to his CV (on academia.edu). At a guess, he’s based in Austria. I found his CV quite interesting, both it and his list of publications is extensive, all of it related to the topic of the special issue.

Camilo Fautz is a member of the scientific staff at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Germany) and a PhD student, if his profile page is up-to-date. He too has a number of papers on ‘relevant to the special issue’ topics listed on his profile page.

Good luck with your submissions.

FrogHeart at the 2012 S.NET conference, part 4: academics talk about public engagement, DEMOCS card game, and China ‘breaks the rules’

2 Replies

It seems to me that when social scientists/academics talk about public engagement, there’s an underlying anxiety that revolves around the roles public engagement activities and the academics who deliver those activities play. I attended a couple of public engagement presentations that were academic analyses at the 2012 S.NET (Society for the Study of Nanoscience and Emerging Technology) conference. The first (Towards responsible innovation: Stakeholder engagement and public dialogues on nanotechnologies) was given by Antje Grobe who focussed mostly on her experience with German public engagement (there was also some mention of a Swiss initiative although my memory fails as to the details).

Grobe mentioned the context: aging society, faltering economies, etc., as well as, the difficulties of defining nanotechnology, uncertain knowledge of the risks associated with emerging technologies, competing agendas, both within one’s country and internationally, and more. It was probably the most complexly situated public engagement analysis I have come across.

Franz Seifert’s presentation ‘Diffusion and Policy Learning in the Nanotech-Field. Movement actors and public dialogues in Great Britain, Germany and France’ offered more specific information about the events and outcomes. (Note: He mentioned the situations in Germany and France only.) I was particularly interested in the French experience as the organizers were unable to complete a series of public debates due to disruptions by an activist group (Pièces et Main d’Oeuvre). Seifert didn’t offer much more detail to the information I’d already gathered (see my March 10, 2010 posting and scroll down approximately 1/4 of the way) but he always able to contrast it with the German experience.

After listening to Seifert’s presentation, the questions that arose were these: What constitutes ‘successful’ public engagement and what role should public engagement ‘experts’ play? (These are thorny questions and I have no answers.) Arguably, the French participated vigorously in the debates that were held. Some serious concerns were raised and some public ire expressed. Meanwhile the Germans participated in public engagement exercises in just the fashion experts had planned and hoped for. In my opinion, they were successful in completely different ways and both are important.

I have one final public engagement presentation to mention and that was given by Dr. Donald M. Bruce, ‘What are publics thinking about human enhancement? Playing Democs card games in the WP7 ETHENTECH Project’. In fact, the Democs card game has been adapted for a number of public engagement exercises (including nanotechnology) for policy discussions to take place in pubs, community centres, people’s homes, and elsewhere.

Here’s more about Democs from its dedicated webpage on the neweconomics.org website,

Democs was created so that policy discussion can be open to anyone. While traditional deliberative methods, like citizens juries, are limited to a few people, who take part by invitation, Democs can be used by anyone, in their own home, their local pub or a community centre.

Our Democs kits provide:

information about a topic on a set of card

an interactive and engaging process to support deliberation in small groups, usually over an hour and a half.

Democs helps people understand the issues before giving their opinion, and ensure that they can make offer policy-makers reasoned, informed and valuable contributions.

We have developed kits on topics ranging from affordable housing and climate change to rubbish disposal and nanotechnology.

Democs has been used in many different contexts:

Large-scale public engagement programmes: in 2004/05, the Herefordshire Partnership used Democs to consult over 300 people in over 50 games on developing the county’s climate change strategy.

Schools: in 2007 we developed a kit on sustainable transport for Transport for London (TfL), widely distributed to London schools

Conferences: Democs was used by Norfolk Ambition, the Local Strategic Partnership for Norfolk, to explore the question, ‘What will success look like?’at their 2007 annual conference

Public meetings: a 2003 Malvern Hills District Council meeting, on GM food.

Democs has been adapted into PlayDecide – a web-based project to make discussion kits on science topics available for download across Europe.

I checked out PlayDecide which is here and found that it’s part of a larger project,

PlayDecide by FUND

FUND is a two year project supported by the European Commission to stimulate the use of discussion games and other debate formats in European cities for the development of a scientific culture at the local level.

Bruce discussed some of the issues associated with using Democs. It can be a challenge getting the results back from people who’ve requested copies of the game so they can play in the pub or at home. I can certainly understand why people might not manage to track the conversations in the first place, let alone, mail in the results afterwards. As well, people don’t necessarily discuss every single question.

Kudos to the organizers for including alternative presentations such as the Democs game and Koert Van Mensvoort’s NANO Supermarket (mentioned in my Nov. 6, 2012 posting). The contrast worked to advantage for both the ‘heavy’ political/policy discussions/traditional public engagement exercises and the alternative approaches. As far as I’m concerned, if you want to engage a wide range of people, you should use a wide range of approaches. On a related note, I also believe that audiences/publics are getting more jaded and need to be challenged.

You can find out more about more about Bruce and his projects here.

The China presentation I’m about to mention doesn’t fit the public engagement theme but I’ve decided to include it here since it won’t fit any more easily into the next and final part of this series on the 2012 S.NET conference.

I was most struck by Denis Simon’s presentation, ‘China’s Evolving Role in International S&T Affairs’, and, more specifically, his insistence that China was ‘breaking the rules’ with regard to intellectual property (patents). US government and US business have long complained about China’s approach to intellectual property. (My June 6, 2012 posting mentions a recent incident concerning a researcher at Sandia Labs who was charged with stealing research to share with China.)

What I found most interesting about Simon’s repeated protestations about China ‘breaking the rules’ is that he didn’t seem to realize the US has had a major role in developing these rules. The rules (both national and international) about intellectual property were not handed down to us by some deity; they were developed by human beings who were likely serving some specific interests of their own.

Simon did point out that China has signed international agreements and while I agree that if they didn’t like the content and had no intention of following the agreements, they probably shouldn’t have signed, China wouldn’t be the first country to pursue that particular strategy. In any event, I’m not a fan of the current patent regimes as I noted in my Nov. 8, 2012 posting about a patent being awarded to Simon Fraser University (Canada) and where I listed these rather critical postings from my archives,

UN’s International Telecommunications Union holds patent summit in Geneva on Oct. 10, 2012

Billions lost to patent trolls; US White House asks for comments on intellectual property (IP) enforcement; and more on IP

Patents as weapons and obstacles

For the fifth and final part of this series: informal science education and transhuman narratives.