TANGO: Technological Innovation: Social Science and Ethical Analyses on Governance

Technology changes society. This raises questions in the context of technology development: on the one hand, the ethical question of which changes are desirable or undesirable, on the other hand the social/political question of a possible control of these technology-based changes. The TANGO project will inquire into how innovation processes affect power and social structures in democratic societies and to what extent previous governance approaches in the field of innovation policy take these processes into account. The overarching research question is: How can governance mechanisms be designed to promote ethically and socially desirable technology research and innovation? Points to Consider will be developed for this purpose. The TANGO project combines social science and ethical research in order to pose the question of existing and possible governance of technological innovation. In this context, one route of enquiry will be which systematics in relation to innovation policy underlie academic approaches in this field, such as Responsible Research and Innovation or Technology Assessment. In two case studies in fields of innovation that are regulated to different degrees, the effects of regulations of varying degrees on the design of innovation processes are examined.