Conference Theme: Making and doing transformations

In July I attended the quadrennial joint meeting of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) and the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S). This (the 11th quadrennial joint conference) was hosted by the Athena Institute at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU).

EASST is the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology. Established in 1981 it represents academics and researchers in the fields of science and technology studies (STS), the social analysis of innovation and related areas of knowledge such as Responsible Innovation. Much like Responsible Innovation, it brings together a variety of disciplines and many of its members have qualifications in both natural science/engineering and social sciences.

Founding VIRI member Maja Horst is current EASST President.

The Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) is an international, nonprofit association founded in 1975 that fosters interdisciplinary and engaged scholarship in social studies of science, technology, and medicine (STS). 4s aims to foster interdisciplinary and engaged scholarship in social studies of science, technology, and medicine across the globe.

Another founding VIRI member Marko Monteiro is a member of the 4s Council, following in the footsteps of other friends of the Foundation Brian Wynne, Sheila Jasanoff and the late Bruno Latour.

This was a huge conference with 3700 participants, many of whom will be well known to our regular readers. Other VIRI members who either convened panels or presented papers include Jack Stilgoe, Stevienna de Saille, Andoni Ibarra, Christopher Coenen, Kornelia Konrad, Phil Macnaghten and Hannot Rodrigues.

Long-time Foundation collaborators Federico Neresini, Giuseppe Pellegrini and Cristina Grasseni convened or presented papers, as did regular visitors Simone Arnaldi and René von Schomberg. Socio-gerontechnology Network members Alexander Peine and Helen Manchester participated, alongside Critical Infrastructures Lab co-founder Maxigas.

Contributors included several other well-known figures from within the Responsible Innovation community whose work has been reviewed on this website, including Lotte Asveld, Michael Bernstein, Tess Doezema, Rider Foley, Christopher Groves, Eleanor Hadley Kershaw and Michiel Van Oudheusden.

The close relationship between STS and responsible innovation was easy to see at this conference.

I saw and heard some fascinating interventions during my time at the conference across a broad range of topics and methodologies, including a full-day panel about the practices of artists, designers, and artistic researchers whose aim is to inspire STS to rethink the position of the arts, including using arts-based interventions as catalysts for strengthening human nature connectedness. This was an impressively broad offering.

I also learned that the level of development of digital humans (presenter Alexandra Anikina prefers the term digital people) is astounding. Digital human avatars are provided to businesses as anytime, anywhere workers. One example offered is the company Uneeq. This company’s website offers the chance to interact with Sophie, one of their own digital humans, which is an interesting and enjoyable experience. Things have moved on a long way from Microsoft’s disaster with Tay!

The avatars are marketed as ‘the Face of enterprise’, which raises questions about the types of faces and bodies used. They are after all designed, beautiful, multi cultural and difficult to pigeonhole. They speak well, softly, with compassion, the construction of an ideal type? But they also resemble Tay!

One new perspective that I took away from my afternoon of avatars and AI came from an insight offered by Nishant Shah. Shah presented an argument about AI that mirrored one that one I had heard used about search engines at the launch of the Critical Infrastructure lab. We tend to think of a search engine or as AI as revelation, revealing relationships of meaning and data to answer our requests. But these systems can also be viewed as concealing systems. They reveal something, an argument, a line or logic, but they conceal a lot more arguments.

One further panel that stood out was Anticipatory transformations, disruptions and variations ‘in’ and ‘for’ Open Science, convened by Hannot Rodriuez, Sergio Urueña and Andoni Ibarra.

From the panel abstract: This panel aims to elucidate the anticipatory and/or disruptive scope of transformative Open Science policies and practices, and to explore alternative ways of conceiving and applying the ideal of ‘openness’ in relation to the dynamics of science, technology and innovation.

I took away the following thoughts: When we talk about science and scientists, we often refer to a community, we even use the term ‘the scientific community’. Community implies openness, and also focus on the community. The sharing of data could be of benefit to the community as a whole, but which kinds of infrastructure would make sharing and use-reuse possible and successful? Use and reuse communities should be integrated into the data release process.

Could the community move beyond openness and towards the common? What would be the implications though? If we think about the food industry as an example, would commons benefit industrial food producers at the expense of smaller producers?

Open science as currently practiced (experimented) has not delivered the promised paradigm shift but mere techno-solutionism. Do we really have any examples of truly open science? A published paper does not accurately represent the research process, so even if shared this is not a true sharing of the actual process.

Rather reflecting the argument above about AI and search engines concealing knowledge, does thinking about futures that are perceived as plausible in effect create closure of openness? Could the exploration of not-yet relations that may or may not be plausible radically challenges our current knowledge production and expand our concept of openness in science, technology and innovation?

In conclusion, I would like to say that this was a well-organized conference, with a really broad range of panels and speakers. It was difficult to choose what to see and hear though, as there were constantly multiple panels running at any one time.

Each participant received a program that included an abundance of food and drinks vouchers. All food was vegetarian and easy to access (although a little overcrowded at times), all of which aided sociality.  The conference also boasted an evening festival, with bands, more food and drinks, a nature walk, cabaret and a radio station.

All in all, this was a very enjoyable and informative conference. It was my first large conference since COVID froze such events, and it certainly brought back all of the great memories and experiences of the past. But I could not help but think about the environmental issues that such an event raises. Only a few cities can host such an event as they require lots of hotel rooms and organizational capacity. This year the two I attended were in Amsterdam and Barcelona. These are cities that already have problems brought about by mass tourism, and although we were all there for work (of course) we certainly swelled the ranks.

At the festival I spoke to a lot of participants from universities all over the world. Many of them had flown to Amsterdam, from the USA, Far East and Australia. We caused an awful lot of pollution between us.