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Technology Consensus Census
issue 9 |
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| Why is it that our politicians seem to have developed an aversion to debating certain subjects ? and we're not just talking sleaze? Squeamish issues like the introduction of gene patenting or the genetic manipulation of animals are debated at length in private, and yet get only very few public airings if compared to the micro-dissections of each new budget. Though no more or less difficult to grasp hold of than a system as complex as the economy, we, the electorate, are under the collective delusion that these matters are over our heads and best left in the hands of the experts. And those experts are as impartial as only captains of industry and research scientists can be. So why have we relinquished our control over the introduction of certain scientific and technological developments into our society, and what is being done to resist this institutionalised passivity? Mute interviewed the Loka Institute's founder and director, Richard Sclove.
Mute: I'd like to start by asking you a bit about the work of the Loka Institute. Richard Sclove: The Loka Institute is a non-governmental organisation based in Massachusetts in the United States, studying and calling attention to the social effects of technology. We do advocacy work and organise the development of new participatory institutions to get a wider range of people participating in decisions about science and technology. M: What successes have you had so far? RS: We haven't succeeded completely with anything, but the two institutions with which we've made most headway are modelled on European institutions. One is a variant of what in Europe are called 'science shops' that are most fully developed in the Netherlands. These are institutions to which universities direct some of their research in response to questions raised by public interest groups, grassroots organisations, trade unions and local government agencies. So it's a way of having universities conducting research not just for industry, intellectual curiosity or for the government but also for other sectors of society. In the US we call them 'community reseaRSh centres' because the Dutch word 'science' doesn't distinguish between natural and social sciences. It's often the case in the Dutch science shops that their studies involve everything from, say, environmental toxicology work to studies for a women's group in Amsterdam. They wanted to know if there would be a market for an independent women's radio station. In the US we found there already were a certain number of organisations who did community based research. The main difference is that in the Netherlands basically every Dutch university has one to ten of these community research centres. And they are networked with each other. Originally this was just by telephone and newsletter, these days it's with the internet, and they're networked with each other in a way that if a community group wants research assistance on a social change project they can go to any one of the science shops and they will be referred to any one of the centres that has the kind of expertise they're looking for. So in the Netherlands, they have a comprehensive system that can basically address any community oriented concern on any topic coming from anywhere in the country. M: So what you are saying is that in the States the existing reseaRSh centres were randomly distributed and working independently of each other? RS: Absolutely, their distribution is very accidental. And they haven't even been aware of each other's existence. So the first thing that we've done is to make these existing programmes and centres in the US aware of one another and begin to develop a capability to learn from one another, to make references and be more visible and accessible. M: Is the internet really helping to encourage that kind of activity? RS: It is. I don't say that as an unqualified supporter of or enthusiast about the internet, as I spend a lot of my time talking about its potential downsides, but yeah, in this case it has helped a great deal. I mean, when I first started writing about this I published an article in a conventional newspaper and then on the internet, and the conventional newspaper got me one or two phone calls and the internet distribution quickly yielded 300 people who said, "ythis". M: Well, it's certainly how we found you. RS: We found that the existing centres and programmes in the US are excited to find out about each other's existence and are generally quite eager to work with us on building a network. The challenge is as always to find funding to support this effort. (laughs) M: Are you getting any state funding for your work? RS: Very limited. But not zero in my case. We happen to be based physically in Massachusetts and our state-wide extension service which is government supported has contributed some financial support to this effort. M: Now I wonder whether I can ask you a bit about why you've chosen the subject of science and technology to focus on people's lack of influence within the decision making process, as opposed to the multitude of other issues that also affect us. For instance our defence policy. Why is that any different in a democratic system where we elect representatives and at that point waive our own individual say in those issues? RS: Well, it's actually not very different from the military issue, but I'd say the military and the science and technology issues together are different from most others. M: Why is that? RS: There are probably several reasons why I focus on science and technology issues. I don't do it because I think they are the most important issues in the world. I think they're up there, but I think there are lots of important social concerns about ordinary housing issues and welfare and medical issues. So it's not that I think that it's the most important. But among important issues, it is one that gets the very narrowest public representation or participation. For instance, (I know the US case best, because that's where I live) in the US our democracy is imperfect in many respects. But I'd say there's more imperfection in how science and technology decisions are made than in many others. For instance, we elect representatives to our congress in the US, but then we don't assume that they just do their own thing. We also assume that they are responsive once they're elected to various popular social concerns. Now in most issues, like education, or health policy, even though it's imperfect, there is some sort of public interest or community representation. In congressional deliberations, for example. Business lobbying may typically have a disproportionate say, but there is going to be some kind of public interest or community voice or representation... M: And you would say that was based on the ease with which the lay person can understand issues to do with welfare, for instance, or housing, as opposed to the exclusive language of science? RS: That's a piece of it, but that's not the whole of it. In science and technology policy making, our congress is influenced pretty much exclusively by representatives of three groups which are: business, the military and *lite academic reseaRShers. Nobody else has a voice and yes, the argument that those three groups would make is that of course they should make those decisions because first of all, they take the broad public interest to heart and are good representatives of it and secondly other people, they claim, wouldn't understand these issues and wouldn't want to participate. M: How do you practically see the possibility of translating the complexity of scientific ideas and language into a language that the pubic can understand in all its subtleties, so that they're then equipped to make a valid judgement? RS: Right, if there were more time I'd answer that in a few ways, but I should probably just talk to you about why I'm in Denmark rather than talking to you from the US. M: Maybe you could answer that question through the practical example of Denmark. RS: The Danish government has really made strides in developing new participatory institutions that address exactly that concern. One of them is something they call the consensus conference, which has been done about 15 times over the last 10 years in Denmark, and since then maybe half a dozen times in other European countries. The process is a little bit like a jury in a court. If the Danish government is going to be debating a complicated, controversial question like biotechnology policy or how we should make use of knowledge from the Human Genome Project, their Board of Technology ? which is where I'm currently working ? assemble a jury (as it were) of about 15 quasi-randomly selected Danish citizens. The panel excludes anybody with expertise on the topic and it excludes anybody from an organised interest group that is active. M: How are those people actually found? RS: They've done it differently in different countries. The way they do it in Denmark is advertising in local newspapers. When we did the first one of these as a test in the US last April we did it through random phone calling. In any of these you assemble a steering committee that oversees the whole process. A steering committee is composed of knowledgeable representatives from groups that do have a stake in the issue. Some would be from industry, some from academia, some might be from public interest groups. M: And there's no danger of the steering committee putting pressure on the elected panel based on their own interests? RS: Well, there would be that danger. The way, if you do it properly, and the way they appear to do it in Denmark is if you pick that steering committee, it should be a balanced group who counterbalance each other. The one time something of this kind was done in the UK, that was not done, and the steering committee had precisely some of that biased impact you're referring to. Not that they directly influenced the lay panel, but I think they influenced the materials and experts that the lay panel interacted with. M: I see. And they're there to really explain the issues, explain the material? RS: Not the steering committee. Because the steering committee is actually balanced against itself, they assure some reasonable impartiality to the process. But the process is that the lay panel spend two weekends being brought up to speed a little bit on the process. They review some material that the steering committee agrees are not biased wildly one way or the other, and maybe would not meet with experts, in the Danish case. But if, for instance, they're doing something on biotechnology they might meet with a high school teacher who explains to them a little bit about DNA, and they might meet with a journalist who explains a little bit about the political terrain of the issue and who the actors are. Then they have a three or four day public forum, after the lay public has been brought up to speed on the issues, that takes place in Denmark in the parliament building. And there anyone in the public or media who's interested can sit in while a group of experts (that the steering committee has approved as not being biased) take turns testifying in front of the lay panel. Then the lay panel takes turns cross examining them. Finally the experts are all dismissed and the lay panel writes up a report drawing their own policy conclusions on the question. M: And what sort of impact do those decisions, that as far as I understand are not then turned directly into legislation, have on the way that policy is decided or the way that industry then decides to back certain kinds of practices and reseaRSh and not others? Have there been any positive examples of that? RS: Yes, in Denmark where it's been done the most and where it's become most institutionalised there are demonstrable impacts. They don't, as you said, become law and I don't think anybody believes they should because it's a very small group and it's not adequately representative of the whole society. It's a way of getting an informed, diverse lay perspective into deliberations, but you don't want it to determine those deliberations. In Denmark, they did a conference on food irradiation in 1989 and that influenced the parliament to ban irradiated food in Denmark, except in the case of dried spices. They did one on the use of knowledge from the Human Genome Project and that influenced the parliament to place strict controls and limits on the use of genetic screening information on insurance and hiring decisions in the work place. And there's some evidence anecdotally that it has, without going through the policy channels of the industry, some influence on industry. Industry in Denmark was initially resistant or sceptical to the process for the same reasons you'd expect it to be in most places. But over time, because these processes occur in the early stages of the development of a piece of technology before a lot of money has been invested by industry, it actually gives them political foresight that can be very useful to their own bottom line considerations. M: So it's like a very early feedback source?. RS:Yes. For instance, the opposite of that was in the US, where the Monsanto Corporation, about ten years ago spent 300 million dollars developing something called Bovine Growth Hormone to artificially stimulate cows' milk production. As soon as that was brought to the market it turned out that small farms and many consumers opposed it. But because Monsanto had no public input at early stages and had already sunk 300 million dollars, they fought like crazy to make sure that this thing went to the market whether consumers wanted it or not. M: How do you see the shift during this century from industrial technologies to information technologies? Do you see any positive developments in that change? RS: Yes and no. I see no positive developments in the uncritical, one-sided enthusiastic hype about IT being a panacea that's going to solve all kinds of social problems. That hype is quite dangerous because these are complex technologies, and any implementation of them will have good and bad effects. But some implementations will still be better than others. The hype just conceals those choices that need to be made, and allows industry to make them without public participation. So the hype is bad. As for the technologies themselves, I'm quite ambivalent. M: But the net is clearly a cheap way for you to challenge the information monopoly of the large corporations.... RS:Loka is a small NGO, we function like many such organisations on a very insecure shoestring budget, always in danger of going under financially. We are basically challenging dominant institutions and foRSes by arguing for democratising decisions that existing powerful institutions like controlling. For that reason it's hard to get resouRSes to do what we do, and that's one of the reasons that we do a lot of our work on the internet. It's not that I intrinsically love the internet. Given that these issues are politically very under developed (there's not a long history in the US of people thinking about how to broaden representation and participation in technology issues, and there's not a lot of money to work on the issue either) I have often chosen to do what I would call preaching to the predisposed-to-be-converted. After very little persuasion they become allies. So I haven't engaged that much with industry because I'm busy doing something else. M: You take the example of the Amish to discuss the sophistication with which certain societies handle the inclusion and exclusion of technologies. Why did you choose the Amish as an example? I am especially interested to know how you think that you can apply such a model, derived from a very small and closed society, to a comparatively vast and heterogeneous society such as the USA's? RS: There are a couple of reasons. It's not that I uphold them as an ideal society, but with respect to decisions about the introduction of technology and their social effects the Amish are the experts. And what's interesting about that is that the strictest old order Amish in the States, of which there are about over a hundred thousand in some 25 states, prohibit formal education past the age of fourteen. So they have this population that by conventional standards is very uneducated in school-based ways. And the standard argument in our society is that lay people can't participate in these decisions about technology because if you don't have a PhD in mechanical engineering or biology you can't understand them. Yet what is fascinating about the Amish ?who are popularly seen as being anti-technology because for instance they still use horses a lot) is that they still use a lot of modern technology, but very selectively. They will, for instance, use tractors, but not for what they were intended. They'll use horses for ploughing and will sometimes own tractors, but put them into neutral and drive them around the farm and use them as a mobile souRSe of mechanical power to do other things. What's fascinating is the way they make the decisions. They do all sorts of, upon reflection, real obvious things that we don't. Like it's real hard to predict the social effects of a technology, so one of the things they do is put new technologies that they're curious about on probation for a year. They say, anyone who wants to adopt it for a year can do it, but we're going to watch what happens to us as a result and re-evaluate at the end of a year, and if we think that it's not having a bad effect we'll continue allowing people to use it. And if, after evaluating it, they conclude that it's having a bad effect then they won't use it. That's a simple empirical test that we don't do. We do it for drugs. We sort of won't allow new medical, pharmaceutical products onto the market until we've tested them for their medical effects. But we'll allow any technology, no matter how upsetting its social and political consequences, out there if it makes a profit. M: I suppose there with the Amish, the question is: how is their decision making process structured? Is there any real opportunity for political dissent? RS: I'm not putting the Amish up on a pedestal, in the sense that regardless of what the answer to that was, what's interesting from my point of view is the fact that these people, who don't educate themselves past fourteen in schools, can still make very sophisticated evaluations of technology's social effects. Even if you felt that they did that in an undemocratic way. M: Do you feel that small initiatives like yours can have an affect in a culture which, in comparison, has introduced technologies in a far less thoughtful way? RS: I would say that in absolute terms LOKA hasn't had that much affect, and yet our affect has really been disproportionate to the time we've existed on our resouRSes. We already have roughly 7000 people on our internet list serves world wide and a considerable international following. But we're at too early a stage to know how much headway we can make. Richard Sclove was interviewed in August '97 by Pauline van Mourik Broekman and Josephine Berry during Mute's Technoscience slot at the Hybrid Workspace. Sclove was in Denmark at the time, working for the Danish parliament's Board of Technology as a visiting researcher. Sclove is also the author of Democracy and Technology, New York/London, Guildford Press. [www.amherst.edu/~loka] and email: [Loka@amherst.edu]
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