The new edition of Research Fortnight carries an article on open access by Jack Stilgoe entitled “Responsible innovation links the future to the present”. In this short piece Stilgoe argues that “The effects of science are unpredictable, unevenly spread and increasingly disruptive. We need to do more to shape technologies before they are fully formed”.

He argues (amongst other things) “that discussions of responsibility in science often zoom in on individuals”, but that what we must do is to ” find ways to analyse, describe and change how systems of innovation engage, not just with their intended futures but with a full range of implications”.

He concludes that Responsible Innovation “is about asking scientists and other innovators to imagine, in conversation with society, different possibilities”.

This exert is taken from Stilgoe’s foreword for Responsible Innovation: Managing the responsible emergence of science and innovation in society (Wiley 2013), a book that also features an overview written by Foundation collaborator Jonathan Hankins.

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(photo: Future by ˜FreeBirD®˜ from Flickr)

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