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2016 has been a wild year for democracy in many different locations. The situation gives room for reflection also from an STS perspective.

This paper analyzes a ten-year long technology debate, which dealt with the so-called advanced electricity meters in Norway (1998–2008). The debate circled around one central question: should the implementation of this technology be forced through with regulations or should the market decide on pace and character of implementation? In 2008 it was decided that it was best to regulate the implementation. Throughout these 10 years, the debate largely concerned how the future would look with or without regulation. This paper is inspired by "the sociology of expectation", which assumes that futures are performative. This means that when the future is evoked or imagined, it influences present action and navigation. With this in mind, the paper analyzes future visions and expectations as they were formulated in the technology debate, and traces the role of these futures in the policy debate and for the policy outcome. The paper identifies two modes of future performativity: translative and transformative futures. Translative futures are often mobilized as spokespersons for desired technology or policy trajectories. Here, they work as (a) stagestting devices: sparking debate, enrolling new actors in the debate and generating interest. Further, they work as (b) regulative tools: establishing the need for political decisions, either to realize the content of future visions, or to avoid the contents of alternative futures. Transformative futures do more subtle and gradual work, shifting the practical, symbolic and cognitive meaning of "what" the technology in question might become in the future. As an example, the significance of the advanced electricity meters discussed in this paper changed from being a device filling the knowledge gaps of electricity consumers, to being a central hub in households delivering a range of potential services and being available for a number of different users. In this paper, I describe the gradual shift in understanding of what advanced electricity meters could be as a virtual domestication trajectory. ; acceptedVersion ; © 2014. This is the authors' accepted and refereed manuscript to the article. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

This article observes two examples of attempted institutional design in Malawi's central region, Kasungu. In both cases external development actors enter local communities, and establish infrastructure to exploit two common sources of water. One is the exploitation of a river for group irrigation, the other a borehole to facilitate appropriation from a source of ground water. In both cases the infrastructure is accompanied by elaborate schemes of governance, ignoring the pre-existing social and bio-physical traits of the area. The results are two non-robust systems, collapsing under the weight of latent conflicts fuelled by the areas pre-existing institutional and bio-physical configuration. Using the framework of robustness in Social-Ecological Systems as a practical-analytical tool, the entities of the two systems are identified and their failure illustrated. The particular lessons drawn from the two cases are transformed into five general points meant to stimulate both development practitioners and future research endeavors.

This open access book examines the role of pilot and demonstration projects as crucial devices for conducting innovation in the context of the energy transition. Bridging literature from sustainability transitions and Science and Technology Studies (STS), it argues that such projects play a crucial role, not only in shaping future energy and mobility systems, but in transforming societies more broadly. Pilot projects constitute socio-technical configurations where imagined future realities are materialized. With this as a backdrop, the book explores pilot projects as political entities, focusing on questions of how they gain their legitimacy, which resources are mobilized in their production, and how they can serve as sites of public participation and the production of energy citizenship. The book argues that such projects too often have a narrow technology focus, and that this is a missed opportunity. The book concludes by critically discussing the potential roles of research and innovation policy in transforming how such projects are configured and conducted.

This open access book examines the role of pilot and demonstration projects as crucial devices for conducting innovation in the context of the energy transition. Bridging literature from sustainability transitions and Science and Technology Studies (STS), it argues that such projects play a crucial role, not only in shaping future energy and mobility systems, but in transforming societies more broadly. Pilot projects constitute socio-technical configurations where imagined future realities are materialized. With this as a backdrop, the book explores pilot projects as political entities, focusing on questions of how they gain their legitimacy, which resources are mobilized in their production, and how they can serve as sites of public participation and the production of energy citizenship. The book argues that such projects too often have a narrow technology focus, and that this is a missed opportunity. The book concludes by critically discussing the potential roles of research and innovation policy in transforming how such projects are configured and conducted.

This article explores the expectations associated with self-driving vehicles and the role of public trials in testing and upscaling this technology. Using a two-pronged empirical approach, we first analyze public responses to draft legislation circulated in preparation for Norway's 2017 Act Relating to Testing of Self-Driving Vehicles. Drawing on the sociology of expectations, we investigate the anticipated benefits of self-driving technology and identify a possible tension between calls for a flexible legal framework and concerns regarding the thoroughness and purpose of testing. Thereafter, the article analyzes interviews with actors conducting the first public trial under the new law, drawing on literature on upscaling and public experimentation to investigate the effects of societally embedded testbeds. We argue that public testing influences the understanding of self-driving technology and its relation to traffic. Additionally, the analysis shows how these understandings enter processes of policymaking, lawmaking, and technology development, indicating that actors conducting testing have been granted significant influence over current institutional understandings and future technical requirements for self-driving vehicles. We conclude that as trial experiences mold current understandings of autonomous transport, companies conducting testing guide expectations toward specific self-driving futures, thus rendering these futures more probable than others. ; publishedVersion ; © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group on behalf of the University of Stuttgart. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Building from two strands of literature within "Sociotechnical agendas: Reviewing future directions for energy and climate research", this perspective piece seeks to open a discussion about how to responsibly accelerate transitions. First, we identify a managerial literature on how innovation and diffusion can be accelerated, which focuses on deliberation with consensus-oriented ambitions. Second, is a set of perspectives that highlights unevenness, and therefore seeks to radically expand climate and energy democracy by promoting new forms of participatory practices. There are few contact points between these literatures. We argue that this can be explained by tensions and paradoxes that accompany accelerated transitions. These paradoxes cannot easily be resolved. We discuss how accelerated social and technological change poses challenges to inclusive and participatory transitions. Further, we discuss how rapid transitions tends to contribute to conflicts between core and peripheral sites. Thus, transitions are not only affected by societal conditions, but also contribute to co-producing social order, including the many forms of social turmoil currently experienced. Such insight places greater responsibilities on transition scholars, especially from reflexive disciplines such as STS and geography. We conclude by discussing how this responsibility could translate into situating climate and energy transition scholarship in broader debates about future socio-technical orders, and sketch three principles of responsible acceleration: a) Moving towards a broad epistemic basis for producing and assessing transition policies and strategies, b) Nurturing polycentrism for rapid climate and energy transitions, and c) Developing polytemporal strategies for transition. ; publishedVersion

For years, technology optimists have hoped that the internet might serve as a vehicle for democratization. Meanwhile, many STS-scholars have called for a democratization of scientific practices through increased transparency and inclusion of lay-persons in scientific knowledge production. Many expect this to result in increased scientific quality and more legitimate knowledge claims. In this article, we explore what happens when science related communication moves online. Do climate scientists and climate 'skeptics' use the internet to engage lay persons in factual deliberations and debate? Does the rise of the internet as a channel of science communication herald a new, democratic scientific era? Our paper suggests that such claims should be made with caution. Instead we identify two ways that the internet is used by climate scientists. First, it is a tool to fight a cold war with climate skeptics, a dynamic which is hidden from public view. Second, it is a site of education, where ready-made packets of facts should be transported to lay-people to mitigate perceived knowledge deficits. This strategy is mimicked by climate skeptics who attempt to make their communication appear more scientific than the scientists. ; publishedVersion ; All content in NJSTS is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The article provides a widened understanding of the concept of end-user flexibility and nuances the traditional individual-oriented approach often used in discussions on low carbon transitions. The authors draw on 75 narratives from of a group of end users that is often considered to be in a very flexible stage of life, namely students. They discuss the co-production of systems connected to material, structural and social factors that extend beyond individual willingness to be a flexible energy consumer. The article stresses that flexibility is shaped by living conditions, everyday life and social norms in particular ways that makes it hard to achieve for students and others living in shared households. The authors conclude that political incentives for low-carbon transitions typically exclude social groups such as students and other vulnerable groups in society, and hence may unintentionally create and reinforce what they term 'flexibility poverty'. ; publishedVersion