Technology Assessment & Corporate Foresight, Storytelling and Science Fiction

Considering that science and innovation are inevitably oriented towards solutions for the future, their public communication also relies heavily on framing this progress in appropriate ways. Four dimensions of doing so are covered in this course: 

First, we analyse the processes and methods which governmental bodies use to assess the opportunities and risks of new technologies, including issues of evidence-based policy-making and regulatory processes. By looking at the communication between NGOs, industry and policy-makers on the one hand, and the public research institutions they assign to conduct "Technology Assessment” (TA), on the other, we address the increasingly important topic of "Science Advocacy”. 

Another main aspect of TA, discussed in this course, is the so-called "Collingridge Dilemma”, which describes the difficulties of predicting the impact of a technology until it is more or less fully developed or even widely used, on the one hand, and the difficulties to regulate and standardise a technology or even influence its development once it was communicated publicly, on the other. With their background in "Public Engagement” methods, students are also introduced to Participatory TA with stakeholders and/or lay-people.

As a second dimension, mainly from an industrial perspective, but nowadays just as relevant for larger research institutions such as MIT or Fraunhofer, TA is closely connected to "Corporate Foresight”, which this course not only covers as a process but also as a source or even means of public communication, as in Siemens' "Pictures of the Future” series.

Assessing future technologies and developing long-term corporate perspectives, always involves scenarios, which in one way or another, internally and/or externally have to be communicated. This is where the "Storytelling” method and the "Science Fiction” genre in particular come into play, which are both also trained practically in the course.