Technocrats rely on radical innovations that alter current paradigms and enable new ideas to be implemented in our world. The relatively new hadron collider in Geneva is a good example for a radical innovation. In debates about usage of such technologies technocrats prefer to ignore emotions. These emotions are said to be irrational and are therefore not valued in the debate. But emotions often reflect underlying morals and values, which are, especially in risk management, important to be considered. After all, evolution equipped mankind with emotions for a reason.
Populists, on the other hand, are wary of radical innovations. They often struggle with the fear of unforeseen risks, which makes them almost immune to factual arguments. Also, radical innovations like gene manipulation make them feel like there is a loss of moral. ‘Mankind is acting in a reckless manner towards nature, which is bound to come with consequences. Therefore, populists tend to favor incremental innovations. The Swiss watch is a great example of such innovation; Even though the knowledge and market isn’t changed, a new variety of watches keeps on being produced.
Unfortunately, it is rarely an incremental innovation that will help improve either modern world society or its environment.
Neither an incremental innovation nor a radical innovation is immediately a responsible innovation. At least, not as long as emotions and morals aren’t being taken care of. Involving emotions into the technical debate, allowing radical and incremental technologies to be implemented, is called emotional deliberation. This is needed, because in order to get the population to adopt the new technologies, emotions and morals have to be aligned with the product, first. The only way to acquire this, is to promote an open dialogue between populists and technocrats. In the debates, emotional deliberation will give the common people a voice and let them feel like they are being listened to. That will equalize the engineer with the common man and create way for an open dialogue.
Through this dialogue, a transfer of responsibility has to take place. In this transition, the individual responsibility over the product should shift from the engineer or company that developed the innovation, to the common people. In this was a feeling of collective responsibility will be created in the society, abandoning fears of encountering unforeseen risks and the possible loss of morals and values.
So in short, if radical technologies are needed to give the world a brighter future, then, a collective feeling of responsibility has to be created.