The Futures Circle - A Framework for Hermeneutic Technology Assessment

Technofutures, meaning statements about new and emerging technologies (NEST) disrupting the world as we know it, often follow a purely hypothetical and thus also speculative manner. At the same time, they shape the way we think and discuss NEST and leave an impact on the development of the actual technology. Scholars from Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Technology Assessment (TA) have turned towards technofutures as objects of interests, to better understand the content, the spreading, and the impact of techno-visionary communication. The shared characteristic of these approaches is that they view technofutures not as predictions of what may or may not happen, but as reflections of current state of affairs, i.e., compositions of existing knowledge, values, and attitudes. One of these approaches is Hermeneutic Technology Assessment (TA), which focuses on analysing how technofutures attribute meaning to NEST. This paper gives an insight into the different perspectives on technofutures and suggests a framework for the hermeneutic assessment of technofutures: The Futures Circle. The framework gives guidance through an otherwise often rather erratic research and contributes to the methodological reflection on Hermeneutic TA.