A post by Max Roßmann

“Microalgae nutrition will save us from climate change as they store CO2 and can be grown without arable land.”

“A diet with microalgae will ensure a better and healthier life.”

“Microalgae are the soy of the future, as they discretely and cost-effectively integrate into established food production systems.”

“Through small-scale and home-based algae farms, urban citizens will break out of the clutches of the food industry.”

Are you convinced now to try eating microalgae, to invest in algae startups, or at least to quickly search Google on whether there's any substance to the visions? In case it only irritated you to read about prominent visions of algae nutrition on The Junkyard, let me briefly introduce myself and today's topic:

As this article aims to bridge the gap between analytic philosophy and empirical Science Technology Studies (STS) for Technology Assessment, I, first of all, thank Michael T. Stuart for asking about how much imagination actually is in sociotechnical imaginaries[1] and Amy Kind for allowing me to share subsequent thoughts in the wonderful Junkyard. I am a chemical engineer and philosopher and study the role of imagination for innovation processes and policy-making. When I started my first project about the “Analysis and scenarios for the use of microalgae as food” at the Institute of Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS), I was first of all fascinated by the manifold and sometimes crazy visions that circulated and engaged people. Since such visions, as depicted above, are not uncommon in the field of new and emerging technologies (NEST), we have a dedicated working group on Vision Assessment to develop theory and empirical methods for analyzing and dealing with visions. But why should one even care about imagination and science-fiction visions for policy advice in the first place?

The mission of Technology Assessment (TA), since its institutional foundation at the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) in 1972, was to independently advise policy-makers (and more recently public stakeholders and researchers for supporting technology design and innovation) on consequences of technologies that are “1. large and growing in scale; and 2. increasingly extensive, pervasive, and critical in their impact, beneficial, and adverse, on the natural and social environment.”[2] The goal, in a nutshell, is to transparently constrain the imagination of technology scenarios, i.e. “hypothetical sequences of events […] for the purpose of focusing attention on causal processes and decision points“ [3]. Scenarios must not be mixed with prediction. The scientific validity of the fictional propositions about the future is based on the transparent composition of acknowledged ingredients in a deliberative discourse about the imagined unfolding and desirability of present actions and policy options[4]. From this juncture, my colleagues Michael Poznic and Rafaela Hillerbrand distinguish projections to be make-believed and model results that are to be believed[5]. “Imagining under constraints”[6] promises epistemic value, when the composition sufficiently relates to reality – and herein lies a crucial point with overly futuristic scenarios.

The history of TA’s vision assessment begins, when the discourse on nanotechnology was dominated by human enhancement scenarios, “converging technologies” (nano-bio-info-cogno convergence), and nano-robots that either cure diseases or, in the “Grey Goo”-scenario finally consume all planetary biomass[7]. The visions were by far detached from the state of research, and fact-checks or scenario assessments could not tame the excitement- and entertainment-driven dissemination of visionary stories. As these stories of avantgarde visionaries increasingly informed the a-theoretical imaginaries[8] by which ordinary people explain their relationship to their social and sociotechnical environment, decision-makers and researchers realized that futuristic visions constituted a new kind of innovation and technology governance[9]. At stake was that exaggeration and scientific non-accuracy in communication (hypes & alarmism) prompt malicious action (e.g., poor health decisions, misdirected investments, and resources, failure to pursue other solutions) and, more generally, jeopardize trust in science[10]. Therefore, the Vision Assessment project was designed to examine appropriate ways of analyzing and dealing with visions in innovation practices.

Indeed, the emergence and dissemination of sociotechnical imaginaries do not presuppose a deeper examination of a proposition kept in mind[11]. However, instead of asking how much imagination effort goes into imaginaries, I would like to ask how much social and sociotechnical imaginaries guide our imagination towards “imaginative illusions”[12] that hinder assessing and constraining imaginings appropriately for epistemic purposes by, for example, placing unlikely scenarios on the agenda of policy-makers or hindering efforts to question taken-for-granted issues.

With the Vision Assessment, TA’s research perspective shifted from debunking scientific un-accuracy and assessing anticipated technology consequences to the inquiry of functions of imagining sociotechnical futures in research and innovation contexts. These functions might, on the one hand, explain how imaginative illusions and misleading scenarios prevail. On the other hand, and this is my intent of this blogpost, they shed light on the interesting roles that imagination plays in wider innovation and research-policy contexts besides the scientific assessment of propositions about the future. Functionally analytically, i.e. inquiring about relevant functions to be performed in a system, the following four functions of imagination in innovation practices were postulated and observed in empirical settings[13]:

1.     Imagining temporal horizons for planning and orienting the present state within research and innovation pathways.

2.     Generating mass-media relevance and possible affectedness required for the democratic deliberation about socio-technical risks, costs, benefits, and their unequal distribution.

3.     Coordinating research and innovation beyond disciplinary boundaries by hypothesizing with actions and decision-making under consideration of other actors and mutual observation.

4.     Motivating action, work, and funding for technology projects despite uncertainty. Keeping or rising the techno-scientific asset values of expertise, laboratory equipment, and prototypes.

As I believe that the philosophy of imagination could explain in more detail and reveal ways of addressing the aforementioned malicious consequences of visions, I suggested using Kendall Walton’s concept of make-believe games for the empirical inquiry of visions. As a case study, I first examined sociotechnical imaginaries about microalgae nutrition and summarized them in short key narratives to instruct imagination[14]. Next, I observed how stakeholders from academia and industry would compose further props, such as scientific models, photos, and research articles, to flesh out and further constrain the different narratives for assessing their feasibility and desirability[15]. In general, it can be noted that the narratives about DIY plants, sustainable world nutrition, or health benefits made participants highlight different aspects of their models & studies, which previously did not differentiate application scenarios. It became particularly interesting when the assembled props, in the end, contested the imagined stories. According to present data & models, there is, for example, little evidence for feasible health or climate benefits with microalgae nutrition. Were the considered (authorized) props not suitable to make-believe a certain course of action and must, therefore, be exchanged, or did the imagined course of action just not match genuine beliefs and desires about the future and must therefore be adapted or surrendered? Instead of just abandoning visions without suitable evidence to make-believe required events for achieving a visionary good, the participants proposed, for example, to jointly submit a legal substantiation trial for health claims, to strengthen certain research, and not to overrate uncertain given findings in order to modify the given reality to which the constrained imagination related. In the case of unproven health claims, one engineer suggested that marketing health products should simply rely on popular imaginaries – green microalgae are good for health – rather than finding evidence in expensive and controversial animal studies which have been rather disappointing so far.

In my case study, imagination did not only serve to assemble pieces of evidence for transparently assessing imagined futures but also gave the imagining subjects an opportunity to exchange across disciplinary boundaries, to socially commit oneself, to plan future inquiries, and to strategize options whose sober assessment, however, must be considered uncertain as the individual involvement of stakeholders also entails the risk of imaginative illusion[16]. The Vision Assessment shed light on relevant and interesting questions regarding the role of imagining technology futures in research-policy and innovation processes. Due to the explorative design of my study, however, there remain open questions whether and what participants learned by imaginatively engaging with the assemblage of beliefs, desires, and props. Have they learned about feasible pathways into the future and adjusted their research agenda accordingly, or have they improved at merely pretending that certain futures are possible, e.g. to raise their research assets’ value[17]? How can one deliberate and mediate awareness about that, in some cases, unconstrained imagination and exaggeration of what is feasible today fulfill a function, while it is detrimental in others? Answering these relevant and actual questions about innovation practice and technology assessment with analytical scrutiny demands, as I propose, a joint effort of philosophers of imagination and empirical science and technology studies.

Acknowledgments: I thank my colleagues Reinhard Heil, Michael Poznic, and Christoph Schneider for their helpful comments.

Notes:

[1] Mike Stuart (2021) https://junkyardofthemind.com/blog/2021/5/7/imagining-our-future-in-space-nasas-sociotechnical-imaginary

[2] United States Senate 1972 in Grunwald, A. (2018). Technology assessment in practice and theory. Abingdon, Oxon, New York, NY: Routledge. (Box 3.1. p. 41)

[3] Kahn, H., & Wiener, A. J. (1967). The year 2000: A framework for speculation on the next thirty-three years. Croton-on-Hudson: Hudson Inst.

[4] Grunwald, A. (2013). Wissenschaftliche Validität als Qualitätsmerkmal der Zukunftsforschung. Zeitschrift Für Zukunftsforschung, 2(1), 22–33.

[5] Poznic, M., & Hillerbrand, R. (2021). Scenarios as Tools of the Scientific Imagination: The Case of Climate Projections. Perspectives on Science, 29(1), 36–61. https://doi.org/10.1162/posc_a_00360

[6] Kind, A. (2016). Imagining under constraints. In A. Kind & P. Kung (Eds.), Knowledge through imagination. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

[7] Grunwald, A. (2013). Techno-visionary sciences: Challenges to policy advice. Science Technology and Innovation Studies, 9(2), 21–38.

[8] Hilgartner, S. (2015). Capturing the Imaginary: Vanguards, visions and the synthetic biology revolution. In S. Hilgartner, C. A. Miller, & R. Hagendijk (Eds.), Genetics and society. Science and democracy: Making knowledge and making power in the biosciences and beyond (pp. 33–55). New York, Abingdon: Routledge.

[9] Grunwald, A. (2013). Techno-visionary sciences: Challenges to policy advice. Science Technology and Innovation Studies, 9(2), 21–38.

[10] Intemann, K. (2020). Understanding the Problem of “Hype”: Exaggeration, Values, and Trust in Science. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1017/can.2020.45

[11] Mike Stuart (2021) https://junkyardofthemind.com/blog/2021/5/7/imagining-our-future-in-space-nasas-sociotechnical-imaginary

[12] Kind, A. (2016). Imagining under constraints. In A. Kind & P. Kung (Eds.), Knowledge through imagination. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

[13] Lösch, A., Heil, R., & Schneider, C. (2017). Responsibilization through visions. Journal of Responsible Innovation, 4(2), 138–156. https://doi.org/10.1080/23299460.2017.1360717

[14] Roßmann, M., & Rösch, C. (2019). Key-narratives of microalgae nutrition: Exploring futures with a public policy Delphi in Germany. Science and Public Policy. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1093/scipol/scz053

[15] Roßmann, M. (2020). Visions as Make-Believe: How Narratives and Models Represent Sociotechnical Futures. Journal of Responsible Innovation, 8(1), 70–93. https://doi.org/10.1080/23299460.2020.1853395

[16] See Kind, A. (2016). Imagining under constraints. In A. Kind & P. Kung (Eds.), Knowledge through imagination. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

[17] See Birch, K. (2017). Rethinking Value in the Bio-economy: Finance, Assetization, and the Management of Value. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 42(3), 460–490. https://doi.org/10.1177/0162243916661633