Sensemaking of Emerging Technologies on the Coordinates of Science Fiction

Abstract

Institutional support is crucial for the development of emerging technologies. However, the institutional sensemaking of emerging technologies can be challenging due to high uncertainty and ambiguity. I take an ethnomethodological approach to investigate the institutional deliberation of emerging technologies in U.S. congressional hearings and records. I found that science fiction plays a vital role in the institutional sensemaking of emerging technologies. Specifically, I discover that the legislators and experts engage with three discursive practices to resolve challenges in the sensemaking of emerging technologies: 1) the communicative use of culture resources in science fiction to evoke the shared memory of concepts, prototypes, scenarios, emotions about new technology; 2) the diametric use of science fiction to emphasize the accountability and rationality of institutional context and and to justify the perceived “appropriateness” policy timing and time horizon; 3) the analytical use of science fiction to juxtapose science fiction with practical reasoning to establish the perceived “rationality” of the risk and benefit evaluation for emerging technologies.