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

开发和测试在参与式技术评估中使用民主设计标准的方法

• 批准号: 0090256
• 负责人: Hal Salzman
• 金额: $ 21.02万
• 依托单位: University of Massachusetts Lowell
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2000
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2000-09-01 至 2003-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0090256&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Developing; Testing; Method; Using; Democratic

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.

该项目将开发和试行一种参与性技术评估方法，其中包括系统地关注技术对民主的影响。情景讲习班使用几种相互竞争的情景说明--每一种都描述替代基础设施技术和机构在推进一项重要的社会目标(如环境可持续性)方面的作用--作为起点。不同的利益攸关方参与者群体：(1)对每个情景进行批评和修改；(2)将重组的情景作为为自己的社区或社会制定优先的未来愿景的基础；(3)确定实现其优先愿景的障碍(例如，文化、制度、技术、经济和法律)；以及(4)制定克服这些障碍的行动计划。该项目将修改设想方案讲习班进程，以纳入参与性应用、评价和改进一系列技术设计问题，这些问题源于共同首席调查员于1995年出版的《民主与技术》一书中的民主标准。为了展示和评估这些方法创新，该项目将在种族多元化的马萨诸塞州洛厄尔市举办一次试点情景讲习班，约有40名当地利益攸关方代表参加。该项目将评估讲习班进程及其在洛厄尔市的后续影响。这一项目产生的方法论创新有可能：(1)帮助社会接受技术对社会和政治结构的关键但往往被忽视的影响；(2)在广泛的科学、技术和环境决策背景下找到适用性；(3)激励其他学者继续研究技术的社会重要但被忽视的民主影响；以及(4)为经济方法提供一种实用的替代方法--例如成本-风险-收益分析和应用新古典福利经济学--尽管存在许多公认的局限性，但今天在公共和私人领域的技术决策话语中占据主导地位。