Themes
Telescopes, microphones, photography, broadcasting, live streaming and social media have magnified our perceptual powers to explore our inner and outer worlds. They have also profoundly changed the nature and experience of human perception and communication. Researchers focusing on the fine arts, design, literature, material culture, and social networks, uncover and reflect upon these transformations; the new modes of aesthetic engagement and communication they engender and the disruptions that can accompany them.
Mass media now provides virtually immediate access to every vendor in the market place of ideas about science and technology. As well as increasing the uptake of new discoveries and innovations, mass media also provides a means for the general public to comment, question, and debate their significance. It has also sharpened public concerns about which voices are authoritative for public policy decisions about research, development, and deployment. Revelations about the influence of corporate funding and the lack of diversity in institutions conducting research raise legitimate doubts about their impartiality. But dissent and denial of institutionally recognized expertise can also be motivated by bias and self-interest. What constitutes responsible criticism of science and technology? How have similar crises of confidence been managed in the past? Are the lessons learned applicable to our situation today?
Our confidence in science and technology is a function of our confidence in the methods of knowledge gathering and testing (epistemologies) used in research and development. Western scientific methodologies seek statistically significant generalizable patterns in phenomena as the basis for objectivity. But such methodologies have limited power to help us understand phenomena that cannot be quantified or generalized. Yet these unquantifiable phenomena -- historical trends, cultural meanings, spiritual aspirations, and social biases – all play important roles in determining what kinds of innovations we seek and the uses we might make of them. To appreciate how scientific and technological programs emerge and the directions requires employment of a diverse array of epistemologies geared to uncover what western scientific methods cannot. How do the epistemologies we deploy to direct, supplement, and sometimes critique western science operate? How are they taught and disseminated? What kinds of archives do we need to preserve their results for posterity?
Before the dawn of agriculture, human beings have manipulated their environments to better suit their needs. As our power to engineer built environments has increased, so too have unintended consequences. Non-human communities of life are being disrupted and vital ecosystem services degraded. Some argue that modern science and technology provide our best means of reversing these impacts, such as genetic engineering, solar radiation management, and “smart” urban design. Others call these “techno-fixes” that treat the symptoms of runaway technological development rather than the disease. To live more sustainably, they believe, we must reduce reliance on post-industrial technologies. Those in the middle look to scientific and technical experts for guidance, but worry if their advice might be biased by economic or interests. What features of scientific communication about the environment is contributing to these worries? What kind of reporting about the environmental impacts of current and emerging technologies might improve openness and accountability and so restore trust?
The microscope, x-rays, magnetic resonance imaging, nanotechnology, and genetic analysis have provided new ways of studying the inner workings of the human body. Electronic monitoring and data collection are expanding medical archives, supporting the development of new technologies to manage medical conditions and alleviate disabilities. However many fear these trends are shifting health care towards industrial models of production. Industrial approaches seek efficiencies by promoting modalities that fit the ‘average’ individual, neglecting the health needs of those diverging from statistical norms. Equally worrying to others are the increasing forms of surveillance employed by public health agencies: pitting individual privacy against public interests in tracking disease outbreaks, managing infectious diseases, and controlling costs. Thus interactions with healthcare institutions can produce frustration, powerless, and dehumanization in those they are meant to assist. Humanities and social science researchers in this area study evolving conceptions of health, disease, and disability, the growth and development of the institutions and professions that deliver them in different settings, and their interactions with the cultural contexts in which they operate. Ethics investigate potential and actual conflicts of values that arise. Artists and designers not only create means of exploring the inner meanings of our experience with health technologies but also ways to humanize our interactions with them.
Scientific and technological enterprises do not operate independently of social norms and aspirations. On the contrary, they are means by which a society seeks a more desirable future for itself. The goal is always to eradicate collective evils arising from human ignorance and vulnerability to the world around them, material and social. The varieties of ignorance and vulnerability which different enterprises aim to overcome are determined by the fears, aspirations, and values dominant in the societies in which they operate. No human societies ever speaks with one voice about how their collective futures should be shaped. Policies socially adopted are a result of convergence around particular ways of ‘framing’ the future, economic, historical, moral, political, social, and religious that justify decisions to pursue some future goods at the expense of others. In democratic societies, where public participation and accountability are valued, dominance over decision-making by social elites has prompted social backlash, from the 19th century “luddites” who attacked mechanization in mills to 21st century media-based movements organized to exert control over the science, health, and environmental policies. To achieve egalitarian public participation in setting goals and boundaries for scientific and technological innovation, it is essential to understand how different methods of social framing intersect, how power relations between social actors can distort dialogue, resulting in divisive policies that undermine collective goals.
