What future, which technology? On the problem of describing relevant futures.

Doing research on future and emerging technologies raises a number of significant ontological and epistemological challenges. The fundamental uncertainty of the future, combined with problems of appropriate descriptions of technology in general, render it difficult to come to an appropriate account of the likely shape and use of future technologies. This paper discusses several streams of research that address this issue, including the question of relevant description and context, interpretive flexibility, affordances of technology, and multi-stability of technological trajectories. The paper proposes that some of these problems may be addressed by using a democratic and participative approach to technology research and development. Participative technology assessment is then discussed as an example of an established way of democratically engaging with technology stakeholders during research and development. The paper concludes by discussing the promises and limitations of such a participative approach with regard to the question of understanding and researching future technologies

What does the future hold? A critical view of emerging information and communication technologies and their social consequences.

This paper provides an overview of emerging information and communication technologies (ICTs) that can be expected to become socially relevant in the next 10 to 15 years. It describes the results of a dual discourse analysis of publiccations on emerging ICTs. Sources were, on the one hand, government/policy publications and, on the other, publications by research institutions. This discourse analysis led to the identification of 11 emerging ICTs. For each of these ICTs, defining features were collected. In order to gain a larger scale understanding, the defining features were then regrouped to assess which likely effect they might have on the relationship between humans and their environment. These features are then interpreted and investigated with regard to what they betray about the implied assumptions about individuals, society and technology. The paper ends by critically reflecting the chosen approach and asking how this research can help us develop technology in desirable ways