The RRI Challenge

2Responsibility and the Future

2.1. The anticipatory aspect of RRI

We already demonstrated that RRI accounts promote a future-oriented notion of responsibility, which aims to initiate a collective commitment towards the “right impacts” foreseen in the needs and desires of society. This entails exploration of the possible future effects of new and emerging technologies, both positive and negative, and anticipating plausible and surprising paths of development in order to adequately navigate the research innovation realm given the complexity and uncertainty it itself produces.

Although such exploration implies a consequentialist ethics of weighing benefits and dangers, and the latter is often regarded as insufficient in initiating genuine ethical reflexivity, we cannot but recognize the importance of such premeditation techniques as a first step in the responsibilization effort. This can explain why anticipatory formats such as Technology Assessment and Foresight are perceived not only as precursors but also as tools for advancing the RRI agenda. In the context of complex and very dynamic socio-technical systems, one of the great governance challenges is the diminished visibility as to causes and effects. This negatively impacts the ability of policy mechanisms to steer technology-led social change to what is deemed to be “right impacts”.

Two very powerful notions that wield the imagination of the world we inhabit make anticipation efforts inevitable. The first is the extreme ...