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

该项目将制定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。设想方案研讨会使用几种相互竞争的设想方案叙述-每一种叙述都描述了替代性基础设施技术和体制在推进一项重要社会目标（例如环境可持续性）方面的作用-作为其出发点。 不同的利益相关者参与者群体：（1）批评和修改每个情景;（2）使用重新设计的情景作为为自己的社区或社会制定首选未来愿景的基础;（3）识别障碍（例如，文化、体制、技术、经济和法律的），以实现他们的理想;（4）制定行动计划，克服这些障碍。 本项目将修改设想方案讲习班的进程，以纳入参与性应用、评价和改进一套技术设计问题，这些问题来自共同主要研究员1995年出版的《民主与技术》一书中制定的民主标准。 为了展示和评价这些方法上的创新，该项目将在种族多样的马萨诸塞州洛厄尔市举办一个试点情景讲习班，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。 该项目产生的方法创新有可能：（1）协助社会认识到技术对社会和政治结构的重要但往往被忽视的影响;（2）在各种科学、技术和环境决策背景下找到适用性;（3）鼓励其他学者研究具有社会重要性但被忽视的技术对民主的影响;（4）为经济学方法提供了一种切实可行的替代方案-如成本-风险-收益分析和应用新古典福利经济学-尽管有许多公认的局限性，但这些方法今天在公共和私人领域的技术决策讨论中占据主导地位。

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.