This project seeks to develop a participatory technology assessment methodology that-incorporates systematic attention to technologies' effects on democracy.- Recent scholarly inquiry into issues involving democracy and technology has focused on the role-of technical experts in technological decisions, or on mechanisms for broadening-participation in such decisions. There has been little effort to operationalize-the complementary need to ensure that democratic processes result in technologies that are-substantively democratic--i.e., that help, both individually and collectively, and directly and indirectly,-to perpetuate democratic values, procedures and institutions.- The principal investigator has developed a set of `contestable` democratic design criteria for technologies. A `democratic politics of technology` would incorporate democratic processes for refining-such criteria and applying them comprehensively across a society's technological order.-However, this requires an institution or democratic-procedure that would make this complex task practicable.- `Scenario workshops`--a participatory technology assessment methodology developed-recently in Europe--harbor the potential to be modified for use in debating and refining-democratic design criteria and applying them to many technologies at once. These workshops use-several competing scenario narratives--each describing the role of multiple technologies in structuring-future daily life--as the starting point for a participatory process. Diverse groups of participants: (1)-constructively criticize each scenario; (2) use the refashioned scenarios as a starting point for-developing preferred future visions for their own community or society; (3) identify barriers (e.g.,-cultural, institutional, technical, economic, and legal) to realizing their preferred visions; and (4) craft-action plans for overcoming these barriers.- Working within the conceptual framework of applied normative democratic theory of-technology, this project will adapt and modify the scenario workshop process so that it includes the-debate, refinement, and use of democratic design criteria. Democratic design criteria will be used to-evaluate previous scenario narratives and workshop discussions, and to modify scenarios so that they-encourage participants to attend to the implications of alternative technology decisions for democracy.-The project will also develop new scenarios and workshop exercises through which future participants-will be able to debate and refine the initial democratic criteria and use them in their own constructive-technology assessment processes.- The methodological innovations from this project may: (1) inspire-other scholars to pursue research into the socially important but profoundly neglected democratic implications of alternative technologies; (2) be ready for testing in practice in future participatory design-technology assessment, technology policymaking, and urban planning exercises; and (3) provide-one practical alternative to the economically-based methodologies--such as cost-risk-benefit analysis-and applied neoclassical welfare economics-that, despite numerous recognized limitations, today-dominate the discourse of technological decisions.-
