ParaNanoia and its Virtues Towards a Global ParaNanoid Model of Innovation
Résumé
Most current linear models of innovation flow from the actively innovating experts "upstream", in their academic, government and industrial laboratories, through a market-oriented development process, and on to the passively receiving consumers "downstream". A truly "social turn" in innovation theory should not only attempt to reverse this over-simplistic linear flow towards a public consisting of passive consumers: beyond recognizing that this public includes a good proportion of active users who invent and reinvent technology through innovative uses, it should also include a close consideration of the collective defence mechanisms actively developed among the public in order to prevent the potential dangers linked to new technological developments. For the various segments of the innovation cycle to go truly "broadband", we need to include in our model a broad approach to the treatment of Environmental and Health Safety (EHS) issues, an approach relying not only on ad hoc mechanisms set up in place in order to deal with each particular new technology and its hazards, but an approach rooted in thick and dense relationships embedded in and congruent with the fabrics of societies. If "social benefit" is to be the key driver to innovation-as everybody officially agrees, be it only for lip-service-, if innovation is expected to meet the collective needs and requirements of adopting cultures, then the first question we should ask is how to assess the desirability and acceptability of a new technology. Asking whether "the public wants" (or "rejects") a new technology suffices to show the countless traps which undermine such a question. What defines "the public" is its non-univocity, the conflicting nature of its many desires and fears. Taking into account this conflicting nature of the public assessment of the social benefits (or hazards) linked to a new technology has far-reaching consequences, which this chapter will attempt to sketch. A truly "broadband" innovation cycle should put this multifariousness of the public and its inherent conflictuality at the core of its dynamics. Recognizing the ubiquitous inventiveness of people in all walks of life as well as the need for exponential increases in openness and communication among the participants in every aspect of the innovation process cannot go without accepting the most radical consequences of democratic empowerment. This radicality appears clearly in that a truly "broadband" innovation cycle should be forced to consider a possibility which is usually excluded from the scope of mainstream discussions about innovation: the collective decision to abort an otherwise promising process of innovation. This chapter will consider recent events in the French debate about nanotechnology, briefly presented here through a series of five "stories". It will then set forth and discuss a number of principles necessary to reframe the question of the assessment of the "social benefits" of innovation.
Domaines
Littératures
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