European Studies in Asia 2008 (Workshop)
How is the EU Perceived in Asia: Media, Public and Elite Perceptions
Bruges, Belgium, on 1-4 September 2008
(deadline 31th July 2008)
TITLE:
Where the Knowledge Management are reorganized for a new direction of Science in Society – Science Communication and Euro Lobbying : Trilogy of technocracy, techno-democracy and creativity of citizens
TYPE OF COMMUNICATION
2000 words short report for the Workshop
PREFERRED THREAD:
The perception of European Elite from European Studies in Asia
- the methodology involved monitoring images of the EU in the media; administering a public opinion survey; and conducting a series of elite interviews.
KEYWORDS:
Technology Assessment, Science in Society, Knowledge Society, GMO, Climate Change, Nuclear/Alternative Energy.
AUTHOR 1
NAME: Shingo HAMADA
INSTITUTION: Université de Bourgogne CRCMD / NISTEP
ADDRESS: 3-12-2, Sendagi, Bukyo-ku, Tokyo, zip 113-0022 JAPAN
TEL: 81-(0) 3-3827-8098
FAX: 81-81-(0)3-3827-8098
EMAIL: sh_ub@yahoo.fr
AUTHOR 2
NAME & INSTITUTION:
NONE
AUTHOR 3
NAME & INSTITUTION:
NONE
ABSTRACT :
The author have been engaged in the research and investigation program of science communication on scientific and political discourses. The issues in wide scientific programs in international collaboration are investigated under the criteria of public concern to the innovation and investment, which is expressed in terms of "Science in Society" in many European countries and in terms of "socio-economical impact of innovation" closely related to "knowledge society in the 21st century" according to the EU definition. The author is trying to translate the scientific discourse faced to the public as "Trilogy of technocracy, techno-democracy and creativity of citizens". This is a short resume of this research & investigation issued by University of Bourgogne for the doctorate research program.
Where the Knowledge Management are reorganized for a
new direction of Science in Society – Science Communication and Euro Lobbying : Trilogy of technocracy, techno-democracy and creativity of citizens
Shingo Hamada
University of Bourgogne
1. Introduction
Since 2003, the author has been performing a series of research & investigation of Science Communication and Lobbying activities concerned to the scientific discourses and to the public debate on the political decision of technology choice regarding to the sustainable development. In a previous occasion, I have pointed out a modelling schematization of "Socio-Economical Impact of Innovation" in the European Institution for Research and Innovation [1].
This modelling studies have been done by scaling the amount of investment of trans disciplinary empowerment in dynamics and mobility of research investigation issued by the scientific and technological R&D institutions in Europe. There, I have remarked a large public sphere lay down near to higher political body like European Commission just above the national research institutions like CNRS in France and/or MPG in Germany. The second vague sphere is emerging near to the university based grass root people’s community. I called them “Social Trust Sphere” which have potential ability to incubate the socio-technological innovation at the same time when they evoke largely a popular debate on the technology advancement and social change [2, 3].
In doing so, I have also pointed out the communication aspect of innovation and human behaviour adapting to the society changed accompanied by the technological innovation. I called it "Trilogy of technocracy, techno-democracy and creativity of citizens", where the essence of scientific discourses are explained by the non-linear technological evolution compared to the linear process represented by the massive production phases in industrial society, and this non-linear phenomena is most important for understanding the next coming fusion phase of knowledge society.
Here in this paper, I would like to advance my research points on this aspect of Trilogy, and get into further detail of the practical items of the research tools, that is, the Technology Assessment caused by both of civil and scientific communities. And by way of this, I would like to demonstrate the mechanism of merging people, different social-political opinions, social classes in some cases, into aligned direction of innovation, sometimes appearing as cutting edge effect in an age of sustainable development.
2. Technology Assessment intrigued by civil and scientific community
In this research, the public debate, typically known for Technology Assessment issues on the GMO, Climate Change and Nuclear/Alternative Energy, are treated. The Assessment bodies are European public institutions like EPTA, STOA Program, or national parliamentary investigation programs in each member states of EU [4-7].
Scientific institutions in EU are also facing to this public challenge of cutting edges for sustainable R&D, the debate also in heart of scientific communities are focusing on the "Socio-Economical Impact" and on the political procedure of selecting the future planning of R&D.
The term of "Science in Society" is such a keyword [3], which permits any steak holder of innovation to understand that the R&D is on the plate of debate, how large should be the scale of R&D program, how much budget should be for it, who can/should be the technology push actors, how can it be absorbed by the market and in public society, etc.
Now that this movement of technology assessment is well known and largely implicated not only in scientific communities but also in civil society, the many European public governors are conscious to launch the programs of "public involvement" for the activity of foresight of R&D and assessment of the future knowledge society.
Here in the table below, I show the schematic categorization of my research work on social networking of technology assessment and science foresight.
3. Euro Lobbying facing the science communication
Corresponding to this social movements, there are growing communities concerning the innovation in society, mostly from the parts of industrial professional parties, specialized in public relation communication and marketing strategies, called Lobbying or Consulting specialists. Their roll is pushing the decision making people in the society, who are active around the public parliaments mostly located in capital cities in each EU member states, governmental institutions like European Commission in Brussels, European Parliament in Strasburg, even scattered in different local area in EU where the European institutions of R&D are located, CERN in Geneva, ILL in Grenoble, ITER in south France etc.
Since the late 1980s, the EU is facing to the serious international economical and industrial conflicts and most of its cause was market concurrence on high technology and value added products. The EU has turned up to empower the RTD system, the ESPRIT and EUREKA program was such the typical reform effort of the applied science to the product innovation.
The new technology has brought a new civil implication to the relation of technology - society, that is, it adds more reflecting effect to the society. The users and consumers have actively the involvement style in technology innovation; the user development of the software for IST, the environmental effect of the GMO in agriculture has evoked largely a protestant movement to the symbolized "Global Economy"; once the climate change has been recognized in global issues, the citizens regardless to experts or non experts have acted to perform the reduction of GHG (Green House effect Gas) and turned up to exchange the GHG commission all over the world; R&D in the nuclear and alternative energy have been also the object of debate and discussion for changing the future of the society.
According to this feature, any RTD system in EU cannot avoid to face to the reform pressure, mostly for reducing the environmental risks, and partly for the enlarging and reorganizing the benefit of the community. The reform of ESF (Euro Science Foundation) was one of such challenge, where the traditional academic bulk organization cannot any more react to the organizational change to the higher acceleration of the innovation at the same time to reflexive and risk reducing technology and friendly to the environment.
Since 2000, the Lisbon declaration has implicated the European RTD system into handling a pin curve, the voluntary experts of Euroscience Foundation beside the ESF has launched the social improvement, such as reform of ESF to new council body ERC, a head of DG Research Innovation of EC, they have organized the bi-annual meeting ESOF (Euro Science Open Forum) for all the actors of RTD in EU. They reorganized the framework of international cooperation inside EU to a mutually evaluated research exchange ERA-NET, integrated with NoE (Network of Excellence).
In this course, the concept of "Science and Society" has been publicly announced for taking attention of the citizen society, reflecting the social protest to GMO legalization by EU, they have promoted the social dialog between citizen and experts. They have concentrated to research and investigate on the communication study, how the civil society reacts to the scientific discourses.
Compared to United States of America, where the famous industrial Lobbyists are active in Washington D.C. area, mostly for pushing the deputies and senators at national congress and parliaments, the European case is full of variation and there are plenty of study targets. However, we should remark, the US's case is the very typical for advanced industrialized country, where they have abolished the public technology assessment body OTA attached to the US national congress in the early 1990.
The nature of European movement of Technology Assessment in society is still under evolution, one of it's civilized movement is recently known as "Science Café" involving the lay person in the acceptance part of technology but also the main innovation actor "Scientists" and "Engineers" exhibiting their out-reach of R&D programs. Here we see the most traditional type of encounter of the two different actors of innovation in society, the developers and the consumers of new knowledge, that is, science and technology.
Traditionally, the academic research & study is focusing on this encounter and on the dialog between these two, called proliferation of scientific knowledge, or vulgarization of sciences, where the motivation is laying on the methodology of communication for mutual understanding.
In our modern situation of Lobbyists, there are much more complicated things like business negotiation, professional know-how for technology forecasting, accounting and evaluation of socio-economical impact factors, the arts of putting issues on political procedure, etc. but they are mostly based on the human meeting of face-to-face contact.
The RTD institutions in EU are sending the experts for business negotiations to Brussels, Strasburg and other important international commissions. The experts gather near to parliament or government houses and they form the network of "Cabinet of Experts/Consultant". They analyse and examine the industrial demand, sometimes the demand from the consumers, and they push the solution of the problem to the decision makers.
Nowadays, thiese human contacts remain still essential and most important for decision making, especially when the public protestation meets with mass media and the voice reached to the alternation of the decision makers. Although, in a different way, the lobbyist and consultants have developed a more efficient method of communication thanks to Internet technology, which appears very often as a SIG (Special Interest Group) management specifying the debate argue.
4. New Knowledge Management Tools of Science Communication and Euro Lobbying for the knowledge society.
In the course of evolutionary use of internet tools for communicating each others among the SIGs, they have used e-mails, mailing lists, home pages and web edition has become a de facto standard for exchanging communication as quickly as possible among the advanced steak holders.
This technological change in communication is still moving forward, allowing the high mutual interaction of debate and discussion and also intensive archive capacity. This brings the change in human behaviour in organizing the group discussions, management of human ability in a sense of semi-collective/semi-personal behaviour, which is no more less than the linkage to linkage among the expression of ideas and discourses on the theme.
Here the communication style is depending completely on digital formulation, namely, the application tools of software which regroup the debates and discussion on the Social Network Services (SNS).
The European Lobbyists groups have already appeared on some SNS, Facebook is such a popular reputation for younger generation interested socio-political movement in Europe, but not only them, the major public Party like French UMP is going Cyber for enlarging the popular supports of the political initiative.
I focus here the usage of SIG/SNS by the lobbyist groups for reorganizing the social movement which tends to attract the younger generation for suggesting the new direction of future communication on the Internet.
5. Generalized Form of KMT in 21st Century's civil society
The civil society, in the meaning of sociological object, stayed long time as a "silent majority", however does not exist anymore in any anonymous form for contemporary human beings, they are obliged to appear accompanying the form of SIG/SNS to the public, and the marvellous fact is, they are rapidly growing and appearing on the real world same as in cyber world (e-world). Cyber world, contrary to its profane use of the words, is getting more popular and effective in the sense of making public opinions appealing to the decisional process of politics.
The reason why the e-world is getting rigid popularity, is the usage of Internet Technology Web 2.0. This technology permits, traditionally in market sectors, the silent consumer to be active in communicating their products-consumption, and hence make them more visible on the network actors.
The Euro Lobbyists nowadays depend largely on the Web 2.0 communication tools for treating the debate issues on the public discussions. It includes not only for understanding but also marketing and negotiation process for professional objectives [8].
On the other hand, lay person in civil society have also accumulated the knowledge by this internet communication tools, they begin to put their arguments, and even demonstration of their alternative proposal on the internet plat forms common to the specialists and non specialists.
We have admitted diffusion theory of communication as a way of proliferation of scientific and technological discoveries, but in our post modern age, the Lobbying activity is facing to the criteria highly motivated by the transparency and context depended solution by knowledge concentrated communication.
The knowledge society in real and cyber world is much more intensive in investing this knowledge concentrated communication, which is considered to be also a high value added society, the most typical case is the investment in Open Source Ware, often know with a connotation to open innovation, represented Web 3.0 technology and it can be realized by Open University on Internet [10].
By using these Web 2.0 technology and more, the debate on scientific discourses will be empowered further, where the knowledge elitists in Europe would without any ambiguity focus on the specific determination of technology choice in the marketing.
(2098 words)
Reference
[1]. "Trilogy of technocracy, techno-democracy and creativity of citizens", oral presentation in 2*th annual meeting of JIES, Chamonix, 2005.
[2]. Recommendation issued by European Union of SSH (Social Science and Humanities) in Science and Technology Research & Development. This guideline is often used by the policy maker inside of EU for coordinating the wide ranged section of Research & Study.
http://europa.eu.int/comm/research/eurab/pdf/eurab2005_reprec_ssh_7fp_en.pdf http://europa.eu.int/comm/research/eurab/pdf/recommendations8.pdf [3]. Note : The coordination division of “Science in Society” was formerly established as “Science and Society” inside of DG Research Innovation of EU.
http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/home_en.cfm[4]. European Parliamentary Technology Assessment
http://www.eptanetwork.org/EPTA/index.php[5]. Science Technology Options Assessment
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/stoa/default_en.htm[6]. OTA Office of Technology Assessment, National Congress of USA
[7]. Office Parlementaire d’Evaluation des Choix Scientifiques et Technologiques
http://www.senat.fr/opecst/[8]. The Euro Lobbying Groups : Euractiv
http://www.euractiv.com/ Welcomeurope
http://welcomeurope.com/ Eurosduvillage
http://eurosduvillage.com/ Notre Euroep
http://www.notre-europe.eu/ Europatermine
http://www.europatermine.de/ [9]. Global Millenium Project : Millenium Assessment
http://www.millenniumassessment.org/ World Water Assessment Project
http://www.unesco.org/water/wwap/[10]. CEDEFOP/Training Village
http://cedefop.europa.eu/
