Published March 1, 2015 | Version 10000959

Exploring Social Impact of Emerging Technologies from Futuristic Data

Authors/Creators

Description

Despite the highly touted benefits, emerging
technologies have unleashed pervasive concerns regarding unintended
and unforeseen social impacts. Thus, those wishing to create safe and
socially acceptable products need to identify such side effects and
mitigate them prior to the market proliferation. Various methodologies
in the field of technology assessment (TA), namely Delphi, impact
assessment, and scenario planning, have been widely incorporated in
such a circumstance. However, literatures face a major limitation in
terms of sole reliance on participatory workshop activities. They
unfortunately missed out the availability of a massive untapped data
source of futuristic information flooding through the Internet. This
research thus seeks to gain insights into utilization of futuristic data,
future-oriented documents from the Internet, as a supplementary
method to generate social impact scenarios whilst capturing
perspectives of experts from a wide variety of disciplines. To this end,
network analysis is conducted based on the social keywords extracted
from the futuristic documents by text mining, which is then used as a
guide to produce a comprehensive set of detailed scenarios. Our
proposed approach facilitates harmonized depictions of possible
hazardous consequences of emerging technologies and thereby makes
decision makers more aware of, and responsive to, broad qualitative
uncertainties.

Files

10000959.pdf

Files (176.0 kB)

Name Size Download all
md5:8fe6e3d798328775680ff5362bb32d00
176.0 kB Preview Download

Additional details

References

  • A. R. Kohler and C. Som, "Risk preventive innovation strategies for emerging technologies the case of nano-textiles and smart textiles," Technovation, vol. 34, no. 8, pp. 420-430, July 2014.
  • K. Seear, A. Peterson, and D. Bowman, The Social and Economic Impacts of Nanotechnologies: A Literature Review. Melbourne: Monash University – School of Political and Social Inquiry, 2009, ch. 3.
  • P. Alexandru and D. M. Petroşanu, "The impact of 3d printing technology on the society and economy," J. Inform. Syst. & Oper. Manag., vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 360-370, Dec. 2013.
  • T. A. Tran and T. Daim, "A taxonomic review of methods and tools applied in technology assessment," Technol. Forecast. Soc., vol. 75, no.9, pp. 1396-1405, Nov. 2008.
  • I. T. Cameron and R. Raman, Process Systems Risk Management. Amsterdam, Academic Press, 2005, vol. 6.
  • H. Carlsen, K. H. Dregorg, M. Godman, S. O. Hansson, L. Johansson, and P. Wilkman-Svahn, "Assessing socially disruptive technological change," Technol. Soc., vol. 32, no. 3, pp. 209-218, Aug. 2010.
  • E. Palm and S.O. Hansson, "The case of ethical technology assessment (eTA)," Technol. Forecast. Soc., vol. 73, no. 5, pp. 543-558, June 2006.
  • D. Wright, "A framework for the ethical impact assessment of information technology," Ethics Inf. Technol., vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 199-226, Sep. 2011.
  • L. Frewer, "Risk perception, social trust, and public participation in strategic decision making: implications for emerging technologies," Ambio, vol. 28, no. 6, pp. 569-574, Sep. 1999. [10] N. Pidgeon, B. Harthorn, and T. Satterfield, "Nanotechnology risk perceptions and communication: emerging technologies, emerging challenges," Risk Anal., vol. 31, no. 11, pp. 1694-1700, Nov. 2011. [11] M. L. Healy, L. J. Dahlben, and J. A. Isaacs, "Environmental assessment of single-walled carbon nanotube processes," J. Ind. Ecol., vol. 12, no. 3, pp. 376-393, June 2008. [12] K. Ostertag and B. Husing, "Identification of starting points for exposure assessment in the post-use phase of nanomaterial-containing products," J. Clean. Prod., vol. 16, no .8, pp. 938-948, May 2008. [13] A. B. Stefaniak, V. A. Hackley, G. Roebben, K. Ehara, S. Hankin, M. T. Postek, I. Lynch, W. Fu, T. P. J. Linsinger, and A. F. Thunemann, "Nanoscale reference materials for environmental, health and safety measurements: needs, gaps and opportunities," Nanotoxicology, vol. 7, no. 8, pp. 1325-1337, Dec. 2013. [14] T. Fleischer, M. Decker, and U. Fiedeler, "Assessing emerging technologies – methodological challenges and the case of nanotechnologies," Technol. Forecast. Soc., vol. 72, no. 9, pp. 1112-1121, Nov. 2005. [15] A. Ganguly, R. Nilchiani, and J. V. Farr, "Identification, classification, and prioritization of risks associated with a disruptive technology process," Int. J. Innovat. Tech. Manag., vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 273-293, June 2011. [16] G. Ringland, Scenario Planning: Managing for the Future. Chichester, John Wiley and Sons, 1998, ch. 3. [17] A. Wardak, M. E. Gorman, N. Swami, and S. Deshpande, "Identification of risks in the life cycle of nanotechnology-based products," J. Ind. Ecol., vol. 12, no. 3, pp. 435-448, June 2008. [18] D. Stemerding, T. Swierstra, and M. Boenink, "Exploring the interaction between technology and morality in the field of genetic susceptibility testing: a scenario study," Futures, vol. 42, no. 10, pp. 1133-1145, Dec. 2010. [19] H. Carlsen, L. Johansson, P. Wilman-Svahn, and K. H. Dreborg, "Co-evolutionary scenarios for creative prototyping of future robot systems for civil protection," Technol. Forecast. Soc., vol. 84, pp. 93-100, May 2014. [20] N. Raford, "Online foresight platforms: evidence for their impact on scenario planning & strategic foresight," Technol. Forecast. Soc., 2014, to be published. [21] R. Gheorghiu, A. Curaj, M. Paunica, and C. Holeab, "Web 2.0 and the emergence of future oriented communities," Econ. Comput. Econ. Cyb., vol. 43, no. 2, pp. 117-127, 2009. [22] S. De Spiegeleire, F. van Duijne, and E. Chivot, "Towards foresight 3.0: the HCSS metafore approach – a multilingual approach for exploring global foresights," in 5th Int. Conf. Future-oriented Technology Analysis, Brussels, 2014, pp. 1-20. [23] J. Schatzmann, R. Schafer, and F. Eichelbaum, "Foresight 2.0 – definition, overview & evaluation," Eur. J. Futures Res., vol. 1, no.1, pp. 1-15, Nov. 2013. [24] C. Markmann, P. Ecken, H. von der Gracht, I-L. Darkow, G. de Lorenzis, E. Foltin, D. Hartmann, N. Helfenbein, M. Munnich, and C. Stillings, "Trend database design for effectively managing foresight knowledge – a sophisticated FTA content base architecture to enable foresight processes," in 4th Int. Conf. Future-Oriented Technology Analysis, Seville, 2011, pp. 161-163.