TechnoScienceSociety: Technological Reconfigurations of Science and Society – An Introduction

Abstract

This chapter evaluates an emerging paradigm for testing intelligent technology in society through the analysis of recent street trials of self-driving cars. Moving beyond laboratory-based test protocols, street trials of intelligent automotive technology evaluate their performance in social environments, on public roads. They appear to exemplify an experimental approach to the introduction of technology to society, which extends “beta-testing” procedures from technical to social, ethical and political aspects of technology (Jackson et al., 2014). I examine this hypothesis through a discussion of several street trials of intelligent automotive technology: the roll-out of driver-assist by Tesla; an emission test of a VW diesel car in Germany; the Gateway trial in Greenwich (UK). While each of these street tests puts in place arrangements for social and public engagement with intelligent automotive technology, they do not enable an experimental approach to the societal evaluation of technology. They tend to pursue the societal acceptance of technology and do not curate experimental situations in society in which the proposition of self-driving cars can be examined from a societal point of view. However, the contribution of social research should not be limited to diagnosing methodological limitations of current tests of intelligent technology in society. We should examine if street testing can be re-purposed to enable the elicitation of societal aspects of innovation. I conclude with a description of an ‘experiment in participation’ (Lezaun et al., 2016) in which we deployed creative methods to elicit social issues raised by driverless cars, by way of a group exercise conducted in the Driver-in-the-loop simulator at the University of Warwick (Marres et al., 2017). The explication of social aspects of intelligent technology requires the deliberate adaptation of test environments in society.