TY - JOUR
T1 - Thinking longer term about technology
T2 - Is there value in science fiction-inspired approaches to constructing futures?
AU - Miller, Clark
AU - Bennett, Ira
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors would like to thank Nicole Nelson and Stephen Hilgartner for their insightful editorial contributions and two anonymous reviewers for many helpful suggestions. This work was supported by the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University through NSF Grant #0531194.
PY - 2008
Y1 - 2008
N2 - 'Science fact, not science fiction' is an oft-heard refrain in the world of technology assessment and forecasting. Yet, as a literary form, science fiction offers a unique approach to thinking longer term about technology: one grounded in narratives that are people-centric, future-oriented, and focused on non-linear dynamics across the interaction of multiple technologies, value-laden images of future societies, questions of meaning and identity, and enduring symbols and problem framings. Building on this approach, we suggest in this paper that new socio-literary techniques, inspired by science fiction, could offer significant contributions to the governance of new and emerging technologies by improving the capacity to reflexively assess the social dynamics of socio-technical systems.
AB - 'Science fact, not science fiction' is an oft-heard refrain in the world of technology assessment and forecasting. Yet, as a literary form, science fiction offers a unique approach to thinking longer term about technology: one grounded in narratives that are people-centric, future-oriented, and focused on non-linear dynamics across the interaction of multiple technologies, value-laden images of future societies, questions of meaning and identity, and enduring symbols and problem framings. Building on this approach, we suggest in this paper that new socio-literary techniques, inspired by science fiction, could offer significant contributions to the governance of new and emerging technologies by improving the capacity to reflexively assess the social dynamics of socio-technical systems.
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U2 - 10.3152/030234208X370666
DO - 10.3152/030234208X370666
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:58449099300
VL - 35
SP - 597
EP - 606
JO - Science and Public Policy
JF - Science and Public Policy
SN - 0302-3427
IS - 8
ER -