History and Past Activities
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History and Past Activities |
ESA Conference: Ageing Societies, New Sociology
September 23-26, 2003 in Murcia, Spain
Two streams of sessions of the
Research Network 18: Sociology of Science and Technology (SSTNET)
Convenors:
Raymund Werle: Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Köln, Germany (werle@mpi-fg-koeln.mpg.de)
Marja Häyrinen Alestalo: Dept. of Sociology, University of Helsinki, Finland (marja.alestalo@helsinki.fi)
Luísa Oliveira: DINÂMIA/ISCTE, Lisboa, Portugal (luisa.oliveira@iscte.pt)
Maarten Mentzel: 38 Johan de Wittstraat, 2334 AR Leiden, The Netherlands (m.a.mentzel@planet.nl)
Second Stream: New Technologies in Ageing Societies
Friday Sept. 26
14.30 - 16.30 session 8 (Campus de La Merced)
Chair Luísa Oliveira
8.5. Author(s): Tarkiainen, Ari
Institution: Department of Social Policy, University of Joensuu
Professional Category: Researcher
City: Joensuu
Country: Finland
E-mail: ari.tarkiainen@joensuu.fi
THE EMPEROR`S NEW SUITE- THE DILEMMA OF INVADING NEW TECHNOLOGY POLICY SPACES
This paper will discuss the problems related to the national innovation system (NIS) and its policy implementations. The mission of that policy is: "expand technology policy spaces toward horizontal policies and social innovations and listen to citizens´ and users´ voice carefully."
My focus is here on the Finnish welfare cluster development launched in the nineties, where the traditional medicine, hospital technology industries were amalgamated deliberately with the practices of the Finnish social and health services in the spirit of that new policy.
The focus of that intervention was strongly on ICT- applications in health sector and the problems of independent living among elderly people. The aim was to produce social and technological innovations and build up the basement for further developments. Contrary to expectation the outcomes and results have been rather controversial and embedded with difficult technical, cultural, professional and ethical problems.
This paper analyses critically why those problems emerged. Must we interpret the intervention as a failure? Why the expansion policy seems to be so difficult? Was the policy intervention too technocratic or administrative? Was it mere rhetoric? What is the lesson for policy-makers and researchers?
My thesis is that it reflects some very fundamental difficulties in terms of the ageing societies and the new technology policy will have to confront in the future. The crucial question is: Has the emperor nothing on at all, but nobody dares to say it aloud or what is the point?
Sociology of Science and Technology NETwork - last update: April 2006