Indications of Socio-Economic Impacts of Nanotechnologies: The Approach of Impact Pathway

International audienceFor over a decade, there have been promises about socioeconomic impacts of nanotechnologies. By now they begin to permeate different application domains and in a variety of ways. In parallel, decision makers in various positions call for indicators of socioeconomic impact. This paper shows that in their simple versions, such indicators are an illusion. Instead, one can develop more qualitative indications based on emerging pathways in which impacts are co-produced. In earlier open-ended development of technologies, these are exploratory pathways and can be explored as such; one can anticipate actual developments and use sociotechnical scenarios. This approach has been conducted a number of times and exploratory pathways have been developed and investigated in Constructive TA exercises. At some moment in the emergence of a technology, embedding pathways can be traced, and give information on the co-production of impacts. For embedding pathways, there is no experience to-date. To make a first step, we show that one can already identify different types of pathways depending on the constellation in which technologies get developed and embedded. One further conclusion is that the indications will be specific to concrete pathways, and thus will be bespoke impact indications