One of the seminal articles illustrating values embedded in technology would be Langdon Winner's "Do Artifacts Have Politics?" (This is a highly recommended article, you can read it here.) Over time, VSD has come to represent a conscious effort to design technologies in such a way that they preserve human dignity, justice, welfare and human rights.
With respect to Responsible Innovation, VSD offers a framework for stakeholders to express their values, and try to design operational criteria in a way that respects those values. Since it is visual and explicit, all parties can freely debate and negotiate, facilitating a consensus. From experience in policy studies, it is also found that consensus-building through participation is an important process that increases the acceptance of the final outcome.
