Testing future societies? Developing a framework for test beds and living labs as instruments of innovation governance

Engels, Franziska; Wentland, Alexander; Pfotenhauer, Sebastian

doi:10.1016/j.respol.2019.103826

Cited by 105 publications

(94 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…In the driver‐in‐the loop simulator, we tried out ways of introducing society into the test environments—can “issue maps” do this job?—as well as ways of dramatizing societal concerns in this setting—can we use cardboard figures to explicate dynamics of stigmatization? In taking this approach, we treat society not as a “model community” to be demonstrated—and promoted—in a test environment, as is the prevalent, rather unexperimental approach in test bed design (Engels et al, ), but as composed of an open‐ended set of actors, relations, issues, and dynamics that a test environment may render explorable, and perhaps indeed, test‐able. In this sense, environments designed for the real‐world testing of intelligent technology do have the potential to “test society.”…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this paper, I would like to focus on a more general, or even fundamental, question, namely, whether and how street trials of intelligent vehicles bring social phenomena within the remit of automotive innovation . Scholars in the philosophy and sociology of technology have recently proposed that real‐world testing of technology “beyond the laboratory” can be characterized as a form of social experimentation (Van der Poel, Asveld, & Mehos, ) and as “tests on and in society” (Engels, Wentland, & Pfotenhauer, ): these studies view “the introduction of new technology into society … as a learning process in which the consequences of it emerge only gradually” (Van der Poel et al, , p. 1) and as involving “the enrolment of (more or less) well‐defined populations as subjects of scientific inquiry and technological testing” (Engels et al, , p. 10). In this paper, I evaluate the proposition that real‐world technology trials test society through an empirical analysis of street tests of intelligent vehicles in the UK.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Co‐existence or displacement: Do street trials of intelligent vehicles test society?

Marres

2020

British Journal of Sociology

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This paper examines recent street tests of autonomous vehicles (AVs) in the UK and makes the case for an experimental approach in the sociology of intelligent technology. In recent years intelligent vehicle testing has moved from the laboratory to the street, raising the question of whether technology trials equally constitute tests of society. To adequately address this question, I argue, we need to move beyond analytic frameworks developed in 1990s Science and Technology Studies, which stipulated "a social deficit" of both intelligent technology and technology testing. This diagnosis no longer provides an effective starting point for sociological analysis, as real-world tests of intelligent technology explicitly seek to bring social phenomena within the remit of technology testing. I propose that we examine instead whether and how the introduction of intelligent vehicles into the street involves the qualification and re-qualification of relations and dynamics between social actors. I develop this proposal through a discussion of a field study of AV street trials in three cities in the UK-London, Milton Keynes, and Coventry. These urban trials were accompanied by the claim that automotive testing on the open road will enable cars to operate in tune with the social environment, and I show how iterations of street testing undo this proposition and compel its reformulation. Current test designs are limited by their narrow conception of sociality in terms of interaction between cars and other road users. They exclude from consideration the relational 538 | MARRES O Public Road You express me better than I can express myself You shall be more to me than my poem Walt Whitman, The Open Road 1 | INTRODUC TI ON At least since early 2016, so-called autonomous vehicles, or driverless cars, have been tested on urban roads 1 across the UK, in London, Milton Keynes, Bristol, and Coventry. 2 The most well known of these tests are funded by the UK government, by way of its Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CCAV), and among their principal aims is to demonstrate the capacity of intelligent vehicle technologies to operate successfully amidst social complexity, on the open road. As the Department for Transport explained the approach in its 2015 code of practice for such testing:Manufacturers have a responsibility to ensure that highly and fully automated vehicle technologies undergo thorough testing and development before being brought to market. Much of this development can be done in test laboratories or on dedicated test tracks and proving grounds. However to help ensure that these technologies are capable of safely handing the many varied situations that they may encounter throughout their service life, it is expected that controlled "real world" testing will also be necessary. Testing of automated vehicle technologies on public roads or in other places should be facilitated while ensuring that this testing is carried out with the minimum practicable risk. (Department for Transport, 2015, my italics) 3 As the ...

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Co‐existence or displacement: Do street trials of intelligent vehicles test society?

Marres

2020

British Journal of Sociology

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“…To do so, scholars across the social sciences have in recent years turned to a sociological tradition, the Chicago School, and in particular, the classic proposition of Robert Parks to regard social environments like cities as laboratories (Gieryn, 2018; Gross, 2009; Gross & Krohn, 2005; Guggenheim, 2012). This proposition is today celebrated as a relevant precursor of contemporary efforts to create living laboratories, test beds, and experimental cities (Engels et al, 2019).…”

Section: Points Of Departure: the Social Studies Of Testing And The Smentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In recent years, sociologists and scholars in cognate fields like history, anthropology, and philosophy have insisted on the importance of experiments undertaken in social environments “beyond the laboratory,” describing them as sites where new forms of governance, economy and subjectivity are invented (Engels, Wentland, & Pfotenhauer, 2019; Mills & Tkaczyk, in press; Murphy, 2006; Van de Poel et al, 2017). In this essay, we argue that something more radical is happening than simply attempts to move tests from dedicated test sites into social settings like streets and social media platforms.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Put to the test: For a new sociology of testing

Marres

Stark

2020

British Journal of Sociology

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This is an open access article under the terms of the Creat ive Commo ns Attri butio n-NonCo mmercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes. AbstractIn an age defined by computational innovation, testing seems to have become ubiquitous, and tests are routinely deployed as a form of governance, a marketing device, an instrument for political intervention, and an everyday practice to evaluate the self. This essay argues that something more radical is happening here than simply attempts to move tests from the laboratory into social settings. The challenge that a new sociology of testing must address is that ubiquitous testing changes the relations between science, engineering, and sociology: Engineering is today in the very stuff of where society happens. It is not that the tests of 21st-century engineering occur within a social context but that it is the very fabric of the social that is being put to the test. To understand how testing and the social relate today, we must investigate how testing operates on social life, through the modification of its settings. One way to clarify the difference is to say that the new forms of testing can be captured neither within the logic of the field test nor of the controlled experiment. Whereas tests once happened inside social environments, today's tests directly and deliberately modify the social environment.

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“…A strength of the LL is that residents can already be involved in an early planning phase [103]. The publications on Life & Work focus also on governance issues [135], but proceed towards local entrepreneurship [107], social innovation [136], or the design of the future workplace [137]. The Smart City cluster has high relevance in the LL research.…”

Section: Content Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Living Lab as a Tool to Promote Residents’ Participation in Destination Governance

et al. 2020

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Growing numbers of tourist arrivals, in combination with community-centered tourism products, have fueled the recent debate on overtourism and a redefining of local steering processes. This has also called for the participation of residents in governance processes. One tool to utilize residents’ participation and cross-stakeholder involvement is the Living Lab (LL), which also functions as a medium for self-organization. This article tackles the research gap that exists in the combination of the LL mechanisms and destination governance (DG). Therefore, the research questions address the characteristics and mechanisms of LLs and the potential for residents’ participation. These efforts are operationalized through a systematic literature review (SLR) on LLs, which involves 40 articles. The transfer of the LL characteristics towards DG reveals that certain drivers and barriers exist when implementing the LL in the governance process, such as the combination of destination and city planning or the redefining of hierarchical structures. The SLR recommendations for future research are based on the interface of LL and DG.

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Testing future societies? Developing a framework for test beds and living labs as instruments of innovation governance

Cited by 105 publications

References 36 publications

Co‐existence or displacement: Do street trials of intelligent vehicles test society?

Co‐existence or displacement: Do street trials of intelligent vehicles test society?

Put to the test: For a new sociology of testing

The Living Lab as a Tool to Promote Residents’ Participation in Destination Governance

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