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Contentious wind energy and context
Published in Andrea Bues, Social Movements against Wind Power in Canada and Germany, 2020
Relating the ecological modernization discourse to the issue area of energy transitions and renewable energy, two major strands can be distinguished: a technocratic version and a version which is very close to the democratic pragmatist discourse described later. The technocratic version of ecological modernization has similarities with the economic rationalist discourse in that it regards market forces as central to the procurement of renewable energy. Yet, ecological modernization emphasizes a strong role of the state. Adherents to the technocratic version of ecological modernization would therefore focus on the pure technology procurement part of renewable energy and not on its social dimension. Auction schemes with little focus on local participation would be the favored policy scheme for adherents of technocratic ecological modernization in the realm of renewable energy procurement. On the other end of the discursive range is the version of ecological modernization which overlaps with democratic pragmatism. Advocates for this version would focus on a renewal of the energy system with a strong public involvement and participation.
Prerequisites for System Reliability
Published in Dr. Dimitris, N. Chorafas, Heinrich Steinmann, Intelligent Networks, 2019
We have to evaluate new technology on the basis of incremental functionality and cost-benefit analysis, rather than on technocratic hype. There is one analogy for the mainframe world where, despite IBM’s cajoling users for at least 15 years to migrate from the archaic VSE operating system to the newer and better MVS, most users still are running VSE.
Rediscovering a risky ideology: technocracy and its effects on technology governance
Published in Journal of Responsible Innovation, 2020
Lest we think that talking about the power of technocracy is anachronistic in an age of populism, we can easily point to an endless stream of examples from the entrepreneurs, executives, and engineers who populate Silicon Valley (Sadowski and Selinger 2014) – one of the world’s centers of power and wealth. Yet, the ideology is dominant in other, more august, sources of advice and authority. For example, the influential report on Grand Challenges for Engineering by the US National Academies of Engineering, which influences how government, industry, and academia understand how to solve problems in the world, ‘adopts a technocratic view, sometimes explicitly and at other times more subtly. Early in the introduction … the document sings the praises of technology and strongly implies that social progress has followed suit’ (Herkert and Banks 2012, 112). These technocratic attitudes have long been part of formal, legislative mechanisms of governing technology. The well-known Congressional agency the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) – established in 1972 and shuttered in 1995 – did a lot of good, useful work and set the stage for future efforts around the world. However, its practices were exclusionary (Sadowski 2015); ‘more diverse and plural forms of public knowledge were [marginalized]’ (Wilsdon and Willis 2004, 22).