Plausibility as an issue in participatory Technology Assessment: A reflection on the question “From your perspective, what is intriguing about plausibility?”

摘要: I am presently involved in public participation in science and technology as a social science researcher to the Flemish participatory Technology Assessment (pTA) project ‘Nanotechnologies for Tomorrow’s Society’(NanoSoc); a four-year research endeavour (2006-2010) funded by the Flemish government. The project involves two major Flemish universities and a leading research center on nanotechnology. It aims to provide nanoscientists in these institutes with incentives to reflect on social and ethical issues in relation to possible nanotechnology developments and to integrate such considerations into existent or nascent R&D strategies (for more information, see: www. nanosoc. be). In what follows I briefly focus on instances in which ‘plausibility’emerged as an issue of debate between various participants and argue why such discussions matter in view of the question above. 1In the first of four NanoSoc ‘participation rounds’, participants were asked to co-construct nano-imaginaries, or “socio-technical visions of futures with nanotechnologies”. In an attempt to structure the exercise and clarify its purpose, initiating social scientists defined the issue of plausibility along the following lines: A certain degree of scientific and social feasibility of the visions, meaning that scientific and accordant social developments have to be situated between concrete technology developments not yet realized but with good evidence of feasibility, and the utopian visions of the Science Fiction stories which do not claim to be feasible at all (Van Oudheusden et al., 2007). 2