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Anticipatory governance is 'a broad-based capacity extended through society that can act on a variety of inputs to manage emerging knowledge-based technologies while such management is still possible'. It motivates activities designed to build capacities in foresight, engagement, and integration – as well as through their production ensemble. These capacities encourage and support the reflection of scientists, engineers, policy makers, and other publics on their roles in new technologies. This article reviews the early history of the National Nanotechnology Initiative in the United States, and it further explicates anticipatory governance through exploring the genealogy of the term and addressing a set of critiques found in the literature. These critiques involve skepticism of three proximities of anticipatory governance: to its object, nanotechnology, which is a relatively indistinct one; to the public, which remains almost utterly naïve toward nanotechnology; and to technoscience itself, which allegedly renders anticipatory governance complicit in its hubris. The article concludes that the changing venues and the amplification within them of the still, small voices of folks previously excluded from offering constructive visions of futures afforded by anticipatory governance may not be complete solutions to our woes in governing technology, but they certainly can contribute to bending the long arc of technoscience more toward humane ends.

Anticipation is increasingly central to urgent contemporary debates, from climate change to the global economic crisis. Anticipatory practices are coming to the forefront of political, organizational, and citizens' society. Research into anticipation, however, has not kept pace with public demand for insights into anticipatory practices, their risks and uses. Where research exists, it is deeply fragmented. This paper seeks to identify how anticipation is defined and understood in the literature and to explore the role of anticipatory practice to address individual, social, and global challenges. We use a resilience lens to examine these questions. We illustrate how varying forms of anticipatory governance are enhanced by multi-scale regional networks and technologies and by the agency of individuals, drawing from an empirical case study on regional water governance of Mälaren, Sweden. Finally, we discuss how an anticipatory approach can inform adaptive institutions, decision making, strategy formation, and societal resilience.

Anticipation is increasingly central to urgent contemporary debates, from climate change to the global economic crisis. Anticipatory practices are coming to the forefront of political, organizational, and citizens' society. Research into anticipation, however, has not kept pace with public demand for insights into anticipatory practices, their risks and uses. Where research exists, it is deeply fragmented. This paper seeks to identify how anticipation is defined and understood in the literature and to explore the role of anticipatory practice to address individual, social, and global challenges. We use a resilience lens to examine these questions. We illustrate how varying forms of anticipatory governance are enhanced by multi-scale regional networks and technologies and by the agency of individuals, drawing from an empirical case study on regional water governance of Malaren, Sweden. Finally, we discuss how an anticipatory approach can inform adaptive institutions, decision making, strategy formation, and societal resilience.

Anticipation is increasingly central to urgent contemporary debates, from climate change to the global economic crisis. Anticipatory practices are coming to the forefront of political, organizational, and citizens' society. Research into anticipation, however, has not kept pace with public demand for insights into anticipatory practices, their risks and uses. Where research exists, it is deeply fragmented. This paper seeks to identify how anticipation is defined and understood in the literature and to explore the role of anticipatory practice to address individual, social, and global challenges. We use a resilience lens to examine these questions. We illustrate how varying forms of anticipatory governance are enhanced by multi-scale regional networks and technologies and by the agency of individuals, drawing from an empirical case study on regional water governance of Mälaren, Sweden. Finally, we discuss how an anticipatory approach can inform adaptive institutions, decision making, strategy formation, and societal resilience.

Anticipation is increasingly central to urgent contemporary debates, from climate change to the global economic crisis. Anticipatory practices are coming to the forefront of political, organizational, and citizens' society. Research into anticipation, however, has not kept pace with public demand for insights into anticipatory practices, their risks and uses. Where research exists, it is deeply fragmented. This paper seeks to identify how anticipation is defined and understood in the literature and to explore the role of anticipatory practice to address individual, social, and global challenges. We use a resilience lens to examine these questions. We illustrate how varying forms of anticipatory governance are enhanced by multi-scale regional networks and technologies and by the agency of individuals, drawing from an empirical case study on regional water governance of Mälaren, Sweden. Finally, we discuss how an anticipatory approach can inform adaptive institutions, decision making, strategy formation, and societal resilience.

A prominent imaginary of synthetic biology is the sustainability of bio-based technologies. In this paper, the authors discuss various reports, papers, and activities in synthetic biology in relation to a core set of principles of sustainability, paying particular attention to the concept of "prudent vigilance" as introduced by the report by the U.S. Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues. The authors introduce two additional concepts – anticipatory governance and transformational sustainability science – and outline an approach for systematically incorporating sustainability considerations into the development of synthetic biology that addresses the challenges and opportunities presented by the field in a more robust way than prudent vigilance. The authors conclude that an opportunity exists to shape synthetic biology toward sustainable outcomes and make recommendations for how research funders might seize this opportunity.

This report presents the findings of the Interdisciplinary Research Group "Responsibility: Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence" of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the Technology and Global Affairs research area of DGAP. In September 2019, they brought leading experts from research and academia together with policy makers and representatives of standardization authorities and technology organizations to set framework conditions for a European anticipatory governance regime for artificial intelligence (AI).

Technological innovation is a double-edged and contested arena. On one hand, it has brought us global communications and unprecedented access to information for those connected to the Internet. The last 100 years have seen the widespread deployment of household electricity, potable tap water, and a host of transportation options in the Global North. Technologies allow us to manipulate matter at the subatomic level, and to observe the far reaches of the universe. Humans have been to the moon, discovered life in the deep oceans, and nearly eradicated polio. Clearly, technologies are a powerful force in the world, and innovation is seen as key to economic prosperity in the 21st century.On the other hand, climate change threatens the survival of many species, and the livelihoods of much of the future human population. Further, it is far from alone in terms of problems to which large-scale technological deployment has contributed. Asbestos, DES, DDT, and endocrine disruptors are among the many technologies where some, perhaps many, of the negative human and environmental consequences that have ensued could conceivably have been mitigated. Technological governance is clearly an area for possible improvement, and emerging technologies present a particularly attractive leverage point, as they have yet to develop substantial sociotechnical and institutional momentum.The dominant approach to technological governance in the U.S. is characterized by a combination of market forces, public support for basic science and targeted initiatives, and a "science-based" approach to risk assessment and regulation. In recent years, the EU has emphasized the Precautionary Principle as an alternative governance basis, and there has been much debate about the respective merits of precaution and science. This dissertation argues that much of that discourse misses a much larger point: The prevailing approaches to the governance of emerging technologies in both the EU and the U.S. are inadequate, in that they are excessively focused on relatively narrow conceptions of risk, do not provide a coherent framework for considering risks, benefits, and distributional tradeoffs simultaneously, and tend more towards reactivity than proactivity, particularly in terms of the production of public goods. These failings systematically produce a series of governance gaps in the context of a market economy. Specifically, the rate of innovation tends to outstrip existing capacities for risk assessment, especially in the case of emerging fields such as nanotechnology. Second, the capacity lag in oversight tends to undermine public confidence and trust. Third, markets alone tend to underproduce public goods, a problem that is particularly acute in arenas with substantial environmental externalities. Finally, relevant existing institutions in the U.S. generally lack a systematic capability to incorporate foresight into current policy-making in a meaningful way.This dissertation proposes a combination of the concepts of anticipatory governance and sustainability as a basis for addressing these governance gaps. A strong theme of transatlantic translation runs throughout; many of the recent developments in technology assessment have occurred in Europe, and require substantial adaptation to function effectively in the American sociopolitical environment. Anticipatory governance provides culturally appropriate philosophical underpinning and process; sustainability offers substantive direction. The goal is not to develop overarching theory, but to operationalize these ideas, to put the combination into practice with respect to the governance gaps articulated above. The empirical investigations of the first two gaps employ nanoscale technologies as cases to explore specific instances of the general question "what do we need to anticipate" with respect to risks and public perceptions, respectively. The inquiries regarding the third and fourth gaps are more exploratory. In terms of the production of public goods through innovation, how do the combination of historical patterns and market structures help demark the boundaries of a "constructive intervention space" for public investment? With respect to institutional capacities, how can the combination of anticipatory governance and sustainability assist in evaluating current programs, and designing solutions for the future?Several conclusions with direct relevance to policy, strategy, and governance regarding emerging technologies result. First, existing decision-making paradigms need improvement in order to consider risk-benefit tradeoffs adequately, and to provide guidance to actors on the ground in the prolonged absence of scientific and regulatory certainty. Second, effective public engagement programs in the U.S. must complement and feed into existing structures of representative democracy, rather than attempting to circumvent or replace them. Third, the purported "Valley of Death" between invention and market penetration is particularly acute with respect to the production of environmental public goods, as the barriers to entry in these sectors are a poor match for private funding incentives, implying that this is a constructive area for increased levels of public intervention. Finally, the combination of anticipatory governance and sustainability provides a framework that highlights the fragmented nature of U.S. policy responses to the problem of technological governance, and does indeed provide a solid foundation for the design of future institutions, while recognizing that their implementation will be dynamic, contested, and theoretically impure.

Games offer unique possibilities for imagining and experimenting with new systems of governance for more sustainable futures – new rules and institutions, new roles, and new dynamic worlds. However, research on sustainability games has mostly investigated games as a type of futures method, largely divorced from its societal contexts. In this paper, we argue that to unlock the potential of gaming for anticipatory governance in the service of a more sustainable future, it is important take a whole-society perspective, and examine the possibilities and challenges offered by contextual factors. Using the Netherlands and Japan as examples, we investigate the following questions: 1) How do governance cultures allow or restrict opportunities for the participatory exploration of futures using games? 2) How does, and can, the game sector in a given context support anticipatory gaming? 3) How do dominant societal relationships with games limit, and offer opportunities for, gaming for anticipatory governance?

Gegenwärtig zeichnen sich in der Humangenetik, der Reproduktionsmedizin, der Hirnforschung und der Psychopharmakologie wissenschaftlich-technische Entwicklungen ab, die dazu genutzt werden könnten, den menschlichen Körper und seine Leistungsfähigkeit zu "verbessern" und zu "optimieren". Die Möglichkeit solcher Technologien des "Enhancement" konfrontiert sowohl die Governance von Technik als auch die Technikfolgenabschätzung mit neuartigen Herausforderungen. Der Verfasser zeigt, dass sich deren Struktur und Ausmaß am besten erfassen lassen, wenn man die Herausbildung von Optimierungstechniken als Technisierungsprojekt begreift und analysiert. Ausgehend von zwei aktuellen TA- und Governance-Konzepten wird untersucht, wie auf die Dynamik dieses Technisierungsprojekts frühzeitig und adäquat reagiert werden kann. In einem abschließenden Ausblick wird verdeutlicht, dass die Governance von Enhancement-Technologie politische Fragen der gesellschaftlichen Zukunftsgestaltung aufwirft und zu einer Politisierung von TA beiträgt. (ICF2)