Developing and Testing a Method for Using Democratic Design Criteria Within Participatory Technology Assessment

这个项目将发展和试验一种参与性技术评估方法，其中包括系统地注意技术对民主的影响。情景研讨会使用几个相互竞争的情景叙述——每个描述了替代基础设施技术和制度在推进重要社会目标（如环境可持续性）中的作用——作为他们的起点。不同的利益相关者参与者群体：(1)批评和修改每个场景；(2)以重新设计的方案为基础，为他们自己的社区或社会制定理想的未来愿景；(3)识别实现其理想的障碍（如文化、制度、技术、经济和法律）；(4)制定克服这些障碍的行动计划。这个项目将修改情景讲习班进程，纳入参与性应用、评价和改进一套技术设计问题，这些问题来自1995年联合首席研究员出版的《民主与技术》一书中制定的民主标准。为了展示和评估这些方法上的创新，该项目将在种族多元化的马萨诸塞州洛厄尔市举办一个试点情景研讨会，约有40名当地利益相关者代表参加。该项目将评估讲习班的过程，以及它在洛厄尔市的后续影响。这个项目产生的方法创新有可能：(1)帮助社会认识到技术对社会和政治结构的关键但往往被忽视的影响；(2)发现在各种科学、技术和环境决策背景下的适用性；(3)鼓励其他学者对技术对社会重要但被忽视的民主影响进行研究；(4)为经济学方法论——如成本-风险-收益分析和应用新古典福利经济学——提供一个实用的替代方案，尽管有许多公认的局限性，但它们今天在公共和私人领域的技术决策话语中都占据主导地位。

This project will develop and pilot test a participatory technology assessment method that incorporates systematic attention to technologies effects on democracy. Scenario workshops use several competing scenario narratives -- each describing the role of alternative infrastructural technologies and institutions in advancing an important social objective (such as environmental sustainability) -- as their starting point. Diverse groups of stakeholder participants: (1) critique and revise each scenario; (2) use the refashioned scenarios as one basis for developing preferred future visions for their own community or society; (3) identify barriers (e.g., cultural, institutional, technical, economic, and legal) to realizing their preferred visions; and (4) craft action plans for overcoming these barriers. This project will modify the scenario workshop process to incorporate the participatory application, evaluation, and refinement of a set of technological design questions derived from democratic criteria developed in Democracy and Technology, a book published by the co-principal investigator in 1995. To demonstrate and evaluate these methodological innovations, the project will conduct a pilot scenario workshop in the ethnically diverse city of Lowell, Massachusetts, involving approximately 40 local stakeholder representatives. The project will evaluate the workshop process, as well as its follow-up impact within the city of Lowell. The methodological innovations resulting from this project have the potential to: (1) assist societies in coming to terms with the crucial but often-neglected effects of technologies on social and political structure; (2) find applicability in a wide variety of science, technology, and environmental decision-making contexts; (3) stimulate other scholars to pursue research into socially important but neglected democratic implications of technologies; and (4) provide one practical alternative to economistic methodologies -- such as cost-risk-benefit analysis and applied neoclassical welfare economics -- that, despite numerous recognized limitations, today dominate the discourse of technological decisions in public and private arenas alike.