307 research outputs found
Geoengineering as Collective Experimentation.
Geoengineering is defined as the 'deliberate and large-scale intervention in the Earth's climatic system with the aim of reducing global warming'. The technological proposals for doing this are highly speculative. Research is at an early stage, but there is a strong consensus that technologies would, if realisable, have profound and surprising ramifications. Geoengineering would seem to be an archetype of technology as social experiment, blurring lines that separate research from deployment and scientific knowledge from technological artefacts. Looking into the experimental systems of geoengineering, we can see the negotiation of what is known and unknown. The paper argues that, in renegotiating such systems, we can approach a new mode of governance-collective experimentation. This has important ramifications not just for how we imagine future geoengineering technologies, but also for how we govern geoengineering experiments currently under discussion
Experiment earth: Responsible innovation in geoengineering
Experiments in geoengineering - intentionally manipulating the Earth's climate to reduce global warming - have become the focus of a vital debate about responsible science and innovation. Drawing on three years of sociological research working with scientists on one of the world's first major geoengineering projects, this book examines the politics of experimentation. Geoengineering provides a test case for rethinking the responsibilities of scientists and asking how science can take better care of the futures that it helps bring about. This book gives students, researchers and the general reader interested in the place of science in contemporary society a compelling framework for future thinking and discussion
How can we know a self-driving car is safe?
Self-driving cars promise solutions to some of the hazards of human driving but there are important questions about the safety of these new technologies. This paper takes a qualitative social science approach to the question âhow safe is safe enough?â Drawing on 50 interviews with people developing and researching self-driving cars, I describe two dominant narratives of safety. The first, safety-in-numbers, sees safety as a self-evident property of the technology and offers metrics in an attempt to reassure the public. The second approach, safety-by-design, starts with the challenge of safety assurance and sees the technology as intrinsically problematic. The first approach is concerned only with performanceâwhat a self-driving system does. The second is also concerned with why systems do what they do and how they should be tested. Using insights from workshops with members of the public, I introduce a further concern that will define trustworthy self-driving cars: the intended and perceived purposes of a system. Engineersâ safety assurances will have their credibility tested in public. âHow safe is safe enough?â prompts further questions: âsafe enough for what?â and âsafe enough for whom?
It's Time to Rethink Levels of Automation for Self-Driving Vehicles
Discusses issues involving the automation of self-driving vehicles. Reports on the technology of self-driving or autonomous automobiles. Examines the extent to which these vehicles serve the public interest as well as the level of consumer confidence in driving these vehicles. Suggests that self-driving cars could be a transformative technology in both good and bad ways. The important questions are not to do with when they will arrive but where, for whom, and in what forms they will appear. If we want a clearer sense of the possibilities from automated vehicle systems, we need to broaden our gaze [3]. Rather than emphasizing the autonomy of self-driving vehicles, we should instead be talking about their conditionality. We need to know about the circumstances in which different systems could have an impact on our lives. Self-driving vehicle systems will serve different purposes and take on different shapes in different places. A schema for innovation that points in one direction and says nothing about the desirability of the destination makes for a poor roadmap
The attachments of âautonomousâ vehicles
The ideal of the self-driving car replaces an error-prone human with an infallible, artificially intelligent driver. This narrative of autonomy promises liberation from the downsides of automobility, even if that means taking control away from autonomous, free-moving individuals. We look behind this narrative to understand the attachments that so-called âautonomousâ vehicles (AVs) are likely to have to the world. Drawing on 50 interviews with AV developers, researchers and other stakeholders, we explore the social and technological attachments that stakeholders see inside the vehicle, on the road and with the wider world. These range from software and hardware to the behaviours of other road users and the material, social and economic infrastructure that supports driving and self-driving. We describe how innovators understand, engage with or seek to escape from these attachments in three categories: âbrute forceâ, which sees attachments as problems to be solved with more data, âsolve the world one place at a timeâ, which sees attachments as limits on the technologyâs reach and âreduce the complexity of the spaceâ, which sees attachments as solutions to the problems encountered by technology developers. Understanding attachments provides a powerful way to anticipate various possible constitutions for the technology
Rejecting acceptance: learning from public dialogue on self-driving vehicles
The investment and excitement surrounding self-driving vehicles are huge. We know from earlier transport innovations that technological transitions can reshape lives, livelihoods, and places in profound ways. There is therefore a case for wide democratic debate, but how should this take place? In this paper, we explore the tensions between democratic experiments and technological ones with a focus on policy for nascent self-driving/automated vehicles. We describe a dominant model of public engagement that imagines increased public awareness leading to acceptance and then adoption of the technology. We explore the flaws in this model, particularly in how it treats members of the public as users rather than citizens and the presumption that the technology is well-defined. Analysing two large public dialogue exercises in which we were involved, our conclusion is that public dialogue can contribute to shifting established ideas about both technologies and the public, but that this reframing demands openness on the part of policymakers and other stakeholders. Rather than seeing public dialogues as individual exercises, it would be better to evaluate the governance of emerging technologies in terms of whether it takes place âin dialogueâ
Active rotational and translational microrheology beyond the linear spring regime
Active particle tracking microrheometers have the potential to perform
accurate broad-band measurements of viscoelasticity within microscopic systems.
Generally, their largest possible precision is limited by Brownian motion and
low frequency changes to the system. The signal to noise ratio is usually
improved by increasing the size of the driven motion compared to the Brownian
as well as averaging over repeated measurements. New theory is presented here
which gives the complex shear modulus when the motion of a spherical particle
is driven by non-linear forces. In some scenarios error can be further reduced
by applying a variable transformation which linearises the equation of motion.
This allows normalisation which eliminates low frequency drift in the
particle's equilibrium position. Using this method will easily increase the
signal strength enough to significantly reduce the measurement time for the
same error. Thus the method is more conducive to measuring viscoelasticity in
slowly changing microscopic systems, such as a living cell.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figure
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