Introduction. Post-truth – another fork in modernity’s path

This text provides an introduction to the volume as a whole, focusing on topics that were much discussed during its preparation and writing. It gives a critical overview of some main events, public and academic discussions, related to post – truth, and of the volume’s individual contributions. It argues that post – truth is deeply connected to main developments of knowledge societies, and their intensifications along multiple axes and dimensions. These developments amount to tipping – points or shifts to relations between technoscience and society and public uses of knowledge, indicating their increasingly political and politicised characters. Such shifts, variously displayed and analysed throughout the book, require discussion and re – articulation of some deeply held beliefs and assumptions about the role of knowledge and truth in public. They pose requirement for new starting points, in societal debates, for critique and academic analyses.publishedVersio

Smart gridlock? Challenging hegemonic framings of mitigation solutions and scalability

Urban energy transitions are key components of urgently requisite climate change mitigation. Promissory discourse accords smart grids pride of place within them. We employ a living lab to study smart grids as a solution geared towards upscaling and systematisation, investigate their limits as a climate change mitigation solution, and assess them rigorously as urban energy transitions. Our 18 month living lab simulates a household energy management platform in Bergen. Norway's mitigation focus promotes smart meter roll-out as reducing carbon emissions, by (i) unlocking efficiency gains, and (ii) increasing awareness for demand-side management. We problematise this discourse. Raising awareness encounters intractable challenges for smart grid scalability. Scattered efficiency gains constitute modest increments rather than the substantial change requisite for rapid mitigation. Whereas promissory smart grid discourse overlooks these ground-truthed limits, our findings caution against misplaced expectations concerning mitigation. We contest discursive enthusiasm on smart grids and argue for aligning local and systemic concerns before upscaling to avoid obscuring risks. Scaling up requires understanding and addressing interdependencies and trade-offs across scales. Focus group discussions and surveys with living lab participants who used sub-meter monitors to track real-time household electricity consumption data over an extended period show that technical issues and energy behaviour, as well as political economic and policy structures and factors, pose significant limits to smart grids. Urban strategies for climate change mitigation must be informed by this recognition. Our results indicate that upscaling relies on bottom-up popular acceptance of the salient technical, organisational and standardisation measures, but that measures to improve the democratic legitimacy of and participation in energy transitions remain weak. We highlight limits to smart grids as a standalone urban mitigation solution and call for a sharper focus on accompanying thrust areas for systematisation and scalability, such as renewable energy integration and grid coordination.publishedVersio

Governing the Median Estate: hyper-truth and post-truth in the regulation of digital innovations

This chapter focusses on governance of digital innovation, making two claims: first, that post - truth is not a mere surface phenomenon, but rather grounded in the general production of knowledge and ignorance. Second, it connects post truth discourse to the “hyper - truth” status of digital innovation agendas. The significant issue is one much commented on in STS (and related) scholarship, namely the intentional blurring and merger of boundaries (hybridisation) in technoscientific and digital innovation. The chapter points to two cases where such hybridisation becomes problematic: the design of privacy into ICT technologies, and a debate over personhood for robots. Both are “post truth” insofar as they intentionally blur the normative with the factual and technological. Hence hybridisation itself has become part of mainstream legitimation and cannot therefore be relied upon by scholars as a critical corrective to idealised and simplified legitimations based in science or law. The authors propose a concept of “boundary fusion”, according to which sources of authority are merged together, as an extension on traditional ideas of “boundary work”, according to which authority is made by separation of sources, such as science and law.publishedVersio

Making sense of sensing homes: exploring ‘regimes of engagement’ in a smart urban energy context

Visionary imaginaries of desirable ‘smart’ urban energy futures entice city governments into innovation and collaboration aimed at large-scale urbanism. As part of attending to actualizations and materializations of ‘smart’ urban imaginaries, this paper contributes to moving beyond idealized framings of smart urban publics, towards more embedded reflexive accounts of how ‘real people’ in urban contexts make sense of and reason about smart urban developments. Through a living lab intervention in Bergen, Norway, we open up a space for critical deliberation, to explore situated imaginations and geographies of smart urban futures. We analyse how people reason about their experiences with smart technological devices, expanding on existing practice-oriented urban studies by applying the pragmatic framework of ‘regimes of engagement’. We analyse shifts people make between different regimes of argumentation and justification, showing how participants pragmatically handle their (simultaneous) status as energy consumers, urban citizens, and responsible users in an urban energy grid.publishedVersio

The Role of Moral Imagination in Patients' Decision-Making

This article reviews recent developments within a number of academic disciplines pointing toward an increasing importance of imagination for understanding morality and cognition. Using elements from hermeneutics and metaphor theory, it works toward a framework for a more context-sensitive understanding of human agency, especially focusing on moral deliberation and change. The analytic framework is used to analyze the story of a patient making tough decisions in the context of prenatal diagnosis. We show how a relatively stable outlook on the world, here called the "baseline of choice,” is challenged by unexpected events and how imaginative processes enter into the active creation of a new moral order. The ensuing interpretation is then placed within a broader philosophical landscape. John Dewey's notion of "dramatic rehearsal” is put forward as one particularly promising way of understanding moral imagination, deliberation, and decision-makin

Make Way for the Robots! Human‑ and Machine‑Centricity in Constituting a European Public–Private Partnership

This article is an analytic register of recent European efforts in the making of ‘autonomous’ robots to address what is imagined as Europe’s societal challenges. The paper describes how an emerging techno-epistemic network stretches across industry, science, policy and law to legitimize and enact a robotics innovation agenda. Roadmap is the main metaphor and organizing tool in working across the disciplines and sectors, and in aligning these heterogeneous actors with a machine-centric vision along a path to make way for ‘new kinds’ of robots. We describe what happens as this industry-dominated project docks in a public–private partnership with pan-European institutions and a legislative initiative on robolaw. Emphasizing the co-production of robotics and European innovation politics, we observe how well-known uncertainties and scholarly debates about machine capabilities and human–machine configurations, are unexpectedly played out in legal scholarship and institutions as a controversy and a significant problem for human-centered legal frameworks. European robotics are indeed driving an increase in speculative ethics and a new-found weight of possible futures in legislative practice.publishedVersio

Electric Vehicle Paradise? Exploring the Value Chains of Green Extractivism

Norway has the world-class ambition to make transport more sustainable and climate friendly. Its electric vehicle (EV) rollout is celebrated by and aspirational for other countries, manifesting the imaginary of technological solutions for sustainable mobility. This chapter undertakes a critically constructive analysis of the value chains of this rollout, tracing the production, usage and discard of EVs. Our point of departure in Norway’s EV rollout serves to map broader implications of a rapid, massive shift towards electric transport. We map relevant externalities associated with, for example, the mining of raw materials and with modes of digitalisation that run counter to circular economy principles. The requisite resources for the transition to renewably powered, electrified transportation―notably batteries―are sourced in the global South, whereas their consumption and industries that reuse and recycle valuable minerals are emerging in the global North. The uneven distribution of benefits and burdens is increasingly being criticised as green extractivism for an imperial mode of living. By paying attention to site-specific struggles over resources, our mapping demonstrates that practices of legitimation have yet to be welded with holistic accountability. By piecing together some major links along the value chains of Norway’s EV rollout, we argue for a global perspective on this transition.publishedVersio

What can history teach us about the prospects of a European Research Area?

This report is the result of work carried out by the Centre for the Study of the Sciences and the Humanities at the University of Bergen, Norway. The work was commissioned by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre at Ispra (Italy), and as such this report is the final deliverable of our Service Contract 257218 with the EC-JRC. The history of science has a lot to offer to contemporary debates on research policy and on science in society. This is especially true when the history of science is not seen as independent from political, economic and cultural history. This calls for a historical sensitivity also for challenges, problems, conflicts and crises; and such a sensitivity appears to be timely in present-day Europe, where the word “crisis” is taking a predominant place on public and political scenes. Having argued that the idea that scientific knowledge should determine or prescribe the course of action is in itself part of the 17th century solutions that contemporary society has inherited as part of the problem, the report suggests possible lines of action and reflection for the European Research Area focusing on European values including diversity and tolerance, universalism, democracy and public knowledge. The report also discusses Grand Challenges and Deep Innovation, reassessing the present function of the ERA, and what policy indicators might be of use.JRC.G.3-Econometrics and applied statistic

Making robotic autonomy through science and law?

This document reports on the Epinet workshop on the making of robot autonomy, held in Utrecht 16-17 February 2014. The workshop was part of a case study focused on developments in this area, in particular, autonomy for assistive robots in care and companionship roles. Our participants were of relevant expertise and professional experience: law and ethics, academic and industry robotics, vision assessment and science and technology studies (STS). The workshop was intended to explore the expectations of robot autonomy amongst our participants, against a backdrop of recent policy views and research trends that are openly pushing an agenda of "smarter", more dynamic and more autonomous systems (e.g. European Commission, 2008; EUROP, 2009; Robot Companions for Citizens, 2012). Robotics development is intimately connected with visions of robot autonomy, however, as a practical achievement, robot autonomy remains till this day part real, part promise. Ideas of robot autonomy are nevertheless powerful societally and culturally-specific visions, even if the very notion of "autonomy" is vague and inconsistent in recent accounts of future robots. These accounts still come together with considerable force in directing the efforts of researchers and experimenters, for example, in establishing funding priorities. They have a function in strategic planning for future developments. Accounts of future robots are also informing and shaping the efforts of legislators, ethicists and lawyers. To that effect, one can say that there is an official vision of future robots, a yardstick with which everyone implicated in robotics development has to measure their expectations

CANDID PRIMER: Including Social Sciences and Humanities scholarship in the making and use of smart ICT technologies

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