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The central questions of this book are how technologies decline,
how societies deal with technologies in decline, and how governance
may be explicitly oriented towards parting with 'undesirable'
technology. Surprisingly, these questions are fairly novel. Thus
far, the dominant interest in historical, economic, sociological
and political studies of technology has been to understand how
novelty emerges, how innovation can open up new opportunities and
how such processes may be supported. This innovation bias reflects
how in the last centuries modern societies have embraced technology
as a vehicle of progress. It is timely, however, to broaden the
social study of technology and society: next to considering the
rise of technologies, their fall should be addressed, too. Dealing
with technologies in decline is an important challenge or our
times, as socio-technical systems are increasingly part of the
problems of climate change, biodiversity loss, social inequalities
and geo-political tensions. This volume presents empirical studies
of technologies in decline, as well as conceptual clarifications
and theoretical deepening. Technologies in Decline presents an
emerging research agenda for the study of technological decline,
emphasising the need for a plurality of perspectives. Given that
destabilisation and discontinuation are seen as a way to accelerate
sustainability transitions, this book will be of interest to
academics, students and policy makers researching and working in
the areas of sustainability science and policy, economic geography,
innovation studies, and science and technology studies.
The central questions of this book are how technologies decline,
how societies deal with technologies in decline, and how governance
may be explicitly oriented towards parting with 'undesirable'
technology. Surprisingly, these questions are fairly novel. Thus
far, the dominant interest in historical, economic, sociological
and political studies of technology has been to understand how
novelty emerges, how innovation can open up new opportunities and
how such processes may be supported. This innovation bias reflects
how in the last centuries modern societies have embraced technology
as a vehicle of progress. It is timely, however, to broaden the
social study of technology and society: next to considering the
rise of technologies, their fall should be addressed, too. Dealing
with technologies in decline is an important challenge or our
times, as socio-technical systems are increasingly part of the
problems of climate change, biodiversity loss, social inequalities
and geo-political tensions. This volume presents empirical studies
of technologies in decline, as well as conceptual clarifications
and theoretical deepening. Technologies in Decline presents an
emerging research agenda for the study of technological decline,
emphasising the need for a plurality of perspectives. Given that
destabilisation and discontinuation are seen as a way to accelerate
sustainability transitions, this book will be of interest to
academics, students and policy makers researching and working in
the areas of sustainability science and policy, economic geography,
innovation studies, and science and technology studies.
Designers of technology have a major responsibility in the current
age. Their designs can have tremendous effects on society, in both
the short and the long term. In fact, sustainable development
itself has all the characteristics of a design project, albeit a
vast one. But a failed product design here will be not just be
unsuccessful in the market - it will have far-reaching
consequences. It is our common responsibility to make the project
successful. Technology has played an important role in creating the
problems that we now face; but it will also play an important role
in solving them. But this does not mean the technological fix will
be easy. How do we allocate resources and attention when there are
myriad issues under the umbrella of "sustainable development"
currently in competition with one another? How do we arrive at
precise specifications for the sustainable technologies that are to
be developed and, furthermore, reach consensus on these
specifications? What if our sustainable technological solutions
aggravate other problems or create new ones? And, because
sustainable development is all about the long-term consequences of
our actions, how do we assess the effects of modifying existing
landscapes, infrastructures and patterns of life?How could we be
sure in advance that the changes that new technologies bring will
make our society more sustainable? These dilemmas and paradoxes are
the subject of this provocative book. Sometimes the claim that a
technology is sustainable is made in order to make the technology
acceptable in the political process, as in the case of nuclear
energy production, where the claims of "sustainability" refer to
the absence of CO2 emissions. In the case of biofuels, claims of
sustainability have led to a "fuel or food" debate, showing that
sustainability has counteracting articulations. And the well-known
rebound effect is observed when increased resource efficiency can
create a stimulus for consumption. What is Sustainable Technology?
illustrates that the sustainability impact of a technology is often
much more complicated and ambivalent than one might expect. Making
improvements to existing designs is not the technological challenge
that will lead to real solutions. We mustn't look to change a part
of a machine, but rather the machine as a whole - or even the whole
system in which it functions. It is these system innovations that
have the potential to make a genuine contribution to sustainable
development. What is Sustainable Technology? will help all those
involved in designing more sustainable technologies in determining
their strategies. It does so by presenting case studies of
different technologies in contrasting contexts. Each case asks: 1.
What articulations of sustainability played a role in the design
process? 2. What sustainability effects did this technology lead
to? 3. Who was affected, where, and when? 4. Could the designer
have foreseen these consequences? 5. How did the designer
anticipate them? 6. How was societal interaction dealt with during
the design process? Finally, the authors reflect on future options
for the sustainable technology designer. They argue that an
important first step is an awareness of the multitude of
sustainable development challenges that play a role in production,
use, recycling and end-of-life disposal. What is Sustainable
Technology? will be essential reading for product designers,
engineers, material scientists and others involved in the
development of sustainable technologies, as well as a wide academic
audience interested in the complexities of the sustainable design
process.
This book explores international biomedical research and
development on the early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease. It
offers timely, multidisciplinary reflections on the social and
ethical issues raised by promises of early diagnostics and asks
under which conditions emerging diagnostic technologies can be
considered a responsible innovation. The initial chapters in this
edited volume provide an overview and a critical discussion of
recent developments in biomedical research on Alzheimer's disease.
Subsequent contributions explore the values at stake in current
practices of dealing with Alzheimer's disease and dementia, both
within and outside the biomedical domain. Novel diagnostic
technologies for Alzheimer's disease emerge in a complex and
shifting field, full of controversies. Innovating with care
requires a precise mapping of how concepts, values and
responsibilities are filled in through the confrontation of
practices. In doing so, the volume offers a practice-based approach
of responsible innovation that is also applicable to other fields
of innovation.
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