# Technology hype: Dealing with bold expectations and overpromising

Jascha Bareis, Maximilian Roßmann, Frédérique Bordignon

► To cite this version:

Jascha Bareis, Maximilian Roßmann, Frédérique Bordignon. Technology hype: Dealing with bold expectations and overpromising. TATuP - Zeitschrift für Technikfolgenabschätzung in Theorie und Praxis, 32 (3), pp.10-71, 2023, 10.14512/tatup.32.3.10. hal-04348493

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# Technology hype

Dealing with
bold expectations
and overpromising

**Special topic** Technology hype: Dealing with bold expectations and overpromising

**Research** Chatbots als pädagogische Herausforderung für Schule und Unterricht

**Interview** with D. Shanley: Can the history of Responsible Innovation help us live better with hype?
# TATuP
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TATuP – Journal for Technology Assessment in Theory and Practice is the peer reviewed open access journal for the interdisciplinary field of technology assessment and neighboring fields of research. It addresses an inter- and transdisciplinary readership.

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Editorial

<figure><img src="image_5.png" /><figcaption>**KAREN KASTENHOFER**
Institut für Technikfolgen-Abschätzung, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien, AT (kkast@oeaw.ac.at)</figcaption></figure>

echnikfolgenabschätzung (TA) widmet sich der Analyse möglicher Folgen neuer Technologien und neuer soziotechnischer Infrastrukturen. Sie versucht Entwickler:innen, Anwender:innen, Politiker:innen und Bürger:innen möglichst früh relevantes Wissen bereitzustellen, um eine informierte Meinung bilden und kluge Handlungen setzen zu können. So weit, so gut. Die damit einhergehende starke Zukunftsorientierung wirft allerdings auch lange Schatten, insbesondere wenn sie auf strategisch überzogene Versprechungen und Befürchtungen trifft. Leicht kann TA hier unkritisch befeuern, was der nüchternen Betrachtung bedürfte; leicht kann sie den Fokus auf kaum relevante Nebenschauplätze lenken, wenn die Bearbeitung drängender gesellschaftlicher Problemlagen eventuell ganz anderer Ansätze bedürfte. Dementsprechend werden schon länger Rufe nach kritischer Distanz und stärkerem Gegenwartszug durch ‚hermeneutische TA‘, ‚Technologien der Bescheidenheit‘, ‚nüchterne TA‘ oder eine ‚Soziologie der Hoffnungen und Erwartungen‘ in TA und Wissenschafts- und Technikforschung laut.

Die Realisierung solcher Programme erweist sich allerdings als voraussetzungsreich. Längst sind in westlichen Innovationssystemen – in akademischen Karrieren, kompetitiver Forschungsförderung und medialer Darstellung von Technowissenschafts- überzogene (Selbst-)Darstellungen und Versprechungen die Norm geworden. Und nicht nur das: Sie sind diesen geradezu funktional eingeschrieben.

Bescheidenheit mutet hier nicht nur seltsam an, sie gerät schlichtweg zum Störfaktor. Längst sind wir alle ‚exzellent‘ geworden und längst trägt jede technowissenschaftliche Neuerung gleichsam im Alleingang zur Rettung der Welt (oder auch ihrem Untergang) bei. Solch überzogene Darstellungen sind einerseits funktional notwendig (zunehmend gilt nur exzellente und ‚High-Impact‘-Forschung als förderwürdig), sie sind andererseits aber natürlich auch wirklichkeitsverzerrend und dysfunktional. Nicht zuletzt können sie das Interesse der Öffentlichkeit nur kurzfristig anfeuern und gefährden langfristig das Vertrauen in Innovationseliten, ihre Vertreter:innen, Institutionen und Interventionen.

Welche Möglichkeiten gibt es nun für TA, solch überzogenen Ansprüchen dort entgegenzuhalten, wo sie offensichtlich dysfunktional werden? Wie funktionieren ‚Hypes‘ und welche Wirkung entfalten sie im Detail? In dieser Ausgabe von TATuP finden sich aktuelle Antworten auf diese Fragen, mit denen wir uns bestimmt noch länger auseinandersetzen werden.

Ich wünsche viel Spaß bei der Lektüre!

Karen Kastenhofer

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© 2023 by the authors;
licensee oekom. This Open Access

article is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY).
https://doi.org/10.14512/tatup.32.3.3
published online: 13.12.2023
# Inhalt/
Content
32/3 (2023)

## SPECIAL TOPIC

### Technology hypes,
expectations
and overpromising

The term 'hype' can be understood as both descriptive and action-guiding. This TATuP Special topic contributes to a better understanding of the temporal and institutional dynamics that create, fuel and maintain hypes in order to better anticipate, deconstruct and criticize them.

10

## EDITORIAL

3 K. KASTENHOFER

## TA FOCUS

6
Meldungen • TA-Grafik • 5 Fragen an H. Paschen •
Aus dem openTA-Kalender • Personalia

## SPECIAL TOPIC
TECHNOLOGY HYPE: DEALING WITH BOLD
EXPECTATIONS AND OVERPROMISING

11
J. BAREIS, M. ROSSMANN, F. BORDIGNON
Technology hypes: Practices, approaches and
assessments

17
T. ROBERSON, S. RAMAN, J. LEACH, S. VILKINS
Assessing the journey of technology hype in the field
of quantum technology

22
M. NEUWINGER
Are social experiments being hyped (too much)?

28
C. ARORA, D. SARKAR
Tech hype as a mnemonic process: Misremembering
the land problem in India

34
T. ZÜGER, F. KUPER, J. FASSBENDER,
A. KATZY-REINSHAGEN, I. KÜHNLEIN
Handling the hype: Implications of AI hype for
public interest tech projects

41
M. KARI, M. LEHTONEN, T. LITMANEN, M. KOJO
Technology hype, promises, and expectations:
The discussion on small modular reactors in the
Finnish newspaper 'Helsingin Sanomat' in 2000–2022

48
R. MEUNIER, C. HERZOG
Omics and AI in precision medicine:
Maintaining socio-technical imaginaries by trans-
forming technological assemblages

54
T. FRISCH
Don't believe the hype?: Imagined business futures
and overpromising for a decarbonized economy

60
S. GAILLARD, C. MODY, W. HALFFMAN
Overpromising in science and technology:
An evaluative conceptualization
RESEARCH

Chatbots
in der Schule

Die Integration von Chatbots und künstlicher
Intelligenz in pädagogische Settings ist für
Schulen und Lehrkräfte eine noch ungewohnte
Situation. Wie kann diese Herausforderung mit der
pädagogischen Herangehensweise an Bildungs- und
Erziehungsprozesse in Einklang gebracht werden?

72

INTERVIEW

Responsible
Innovation and hype

This interview highlights the significance of the
history of Responsible Innovation in understanding
the dynamics of technological hype.
Dani Shanley argues that it needs proactive
engagement to ensure Responsible Innovation's
continuity beyond buzzwords.

86

66

A. PICHL

Efforts against stem cell hype stuck in the logic of overpromising?: An essay on hype-conducive ways of doing ethics

RESEARCH

72

J. GUTBROD, B. KLOPSCH

Chatbots als pädagogische Herausforderung für Schule
und Unterricht

79

F. STELZER, F. PENNEKAMP, L. KINGS,

M. FREUDENTHAL

Mirke Neighbourhood Panel: Accompanying research
for the Solar Decathlon Europe 21/22

INTERVIEW

86

MIT/WITH D. SHANLEY VON/BY M. ROSSMANN

Can the history of Responsible Innovation help us
live better with hype?

REFLECTIONS

90

E.-M. WALKER, L. NIERLING

Book review: Tisch, Anita; Wischniewski, Sascha (2022): Sicherheit und Gesundheit in der digitalisierten Arbeitswelt

92

F. GNISA

Meeting report: "Fair and decent work in the global economy?". International Labour Process Conference, 2023, Glasgow, UK (hybrid)

94

C. KEHL

Meeting report: „Infrastrukturen der Zukunft: Wie kann TA anstehende Transformationen begleiten?“. Conference, 2023, Vienna, AT

96

M. KARABOGA, G. RUNGE, F. METZGER

Meeting report: „Data Sharing – Datenkapitalismus by Default?“. Conference, 2023, Berlin, DE

98

TATuPDates
# TA Focus 32/3 (2023)

## News for the TA community/ Meldungen für die TA-Community

Jonas Moosmüller<fnref n="1" />, Maximilian Roßmann<fnref n="2" />, Steffen Albrecht<fnref n="3" />, Reinhard Grünwald<fnref n="3" />

### EUROPA

#### Vorschläge zu künftiger Politikberatung

Die Rolle der Wissenschaft bei der Vorbereitung politischer Entscheidungen war selten so prominent – und zuweilen auch umstritten – wie während der COVID-19-Pandemie. Vor diesem Hintergrund hat die Generaldirektion „Research and Innovation“ der Europäischen Kommission untersuchen lassen, wie das wissenschaftliche Beratungssystem verbesert werden kann. Der im Oktober 2023 erschienene Bericht befasst sich mit aktuellen Trends wie dem wachsenden Einfluss von KI-gestützten Vorhersagen auf politische Entscheidungen, der Konzentration auf auftragsorientierte Forschung oder der zunehmenden Beteiligung von Bürgerinnen und Bürgern an der Wissenschaft. Der Bericht weist auch auf die Notwendigkeit hin, wissenschaftliche Meinungsverschiedenheiten und die Ungewissheit, die mit großen gesellschaftlichen Herausforderungen verbunden ist, besser zu berücksichtigen. Es sei wichtig anzuerkennen, dass sowohl die Wissenschaft als auch die Politik wertebasiert und Wertedebatten ein wichtiger Bestandteil von Beratungsmechanismen sind.

op.europa.eu/en/home

### POLITIKBERATUNG

#### TA für den Deutschen Bundestag

Auch in den kommenden fünf Jahren wird das Institut für Technikfolgenabschätzung und Systemanalyse (ITAS) die parlamentarische Arbeit des Bundestags mit unabhängiger wissenschaftlicher Expertise unterstützen. Am Büro für Technikfolgen-Abschätzung (TAB) beobachten Forschende des ITAS bereits seit 1990 wissenschaftlich-technische Trends, erstellen Analysen zu aktuellen forschungs- und technologiepolitischen Fragen und identifizieren Innovations-

potenziale. Partner für den Zeitraum bis 2028 sind wie zuvor das IZT – Institut für Zukunftstudien und Technologiebewertung und der VDI/VDE Innovation und Technik. Um Handlungsoptionen für das Parlament künftig noch präziser zu identifizieren, erweitert das TAB sein Methodenspektrum, etwa mit digitalen Datenanalysen und partizipativen Szenariomethoden. Zugleich sollen die Foresight-Aktivitäten den Fokus noch stärker auf Innovation und transformative Resilienz legen. Darüber hinaus hat sich das TAB vorgenommen, die Sichtbarkeit seiner Ergebnisse auch außerhalb des Bundestages zu erhöhen.

www.tab-beim-bundestag.de

#### TA-Grafik

##### Hype-Zyklus in den Medien

Die Aufmerksamkeit für neue Technologien wird bislang gerne mit dem (wissenschaftlich umstrittenen) „hype cycle“ beschrieben: Ausgehend vom technologischen Auslöser führt dieser auf den „Gipfel überzogener Erwartungen“, gefolgt vom jähen Absturz ins „Tal der Enttäuschung“ bis zum Erreichen eines „Plateaus der Produktivität“.

Wie sich dieser Hype-Zyklus in den Massenmedien tatsächlich niederschlägt, zeigt eine Analyse relevanter Begriffsnnennungen in der New York Times. Mehr zum Thema lesen Sie im Special topic „Technology hype“ ab Seite 10.

<figure><img src="image_7.png" /></figure>

Quelle: Maximilian Roßmann, Abfrage von Einzelbegriffen mit der New York Times API (developer.nytimes.com/apis)

<footnote n="1">¹ Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Karlsruhe, DE</footnote>

<footnote n="2">² Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Maastricht University, Maastricht, NL</footnote>

<footnote n="3">³ Office of Technology Assessment at the German Bundestag (TAB)</footnote>
STADTFORSCHUNG

50 Jahre Difu

Welche Spielräume haben Kommunen, bezahlbaren Wohnraum zu schaffen? Wie kann eine ökologisch und sozial verträgliche Mobilität in der Stadt gewährleistet werden? Und wie können Städte die Vorteile von Digitalisierung und KI nutzen? Seit dem Jahr 1973 beschäftigt sich das Deutsche Institut für Urbanistik (Difu) mit den täglichen Herausforderungen von Stadtverwaltungen und Kommunalpolitik. Gegründet wurde das gemeinnützige Institut auf Initiative des Deutschen Städtetags unter dem Motto ‚Rettet unsere Städte jetzt‘. Heute beschäftigt es knapp 200 Mitarbeitende am Hauptsitz in Berlin und einer Außenstelle in Köln. Das langjährige Mitglied im Netzwerk Technikfolgenabschätzung (NTA) ist damit das größte Stadtforschungsinstitut im deutschsprachigen Raum. Seinen 50. Geburtstag feiert das seit 2018 von Carsten Kühl geführte Institut mit einer Fachveranstaltung zu aktuellen Herausforderungen wie Klimawandel und Wohnen, unter anderem mit Bundesbauministerin Klara Geywitz.

difu.de/50-jahre-difu

BETEILIGUNG

Bürgerdialog bereichert
Forschungsagenda

Einen ganzen Nachmittag Zeit nahmen sich am 14. Oktober 2023 in Karlsruhe über 30 Menschen unterschiedlicher Altersgruppen, um zu diskutieren, wie sich Klimaschutz für Bürgerinnen und Bürger lohnen könnte. Organisiert wurde die Dialogveranstaltung vom Institut für Technikfolgenabschätzung und Systemanalyse (ITAS) im Rahmen der zweiten Science Week des Karlsruher Instituts für Technologie. Das Besondere an dem Format: „Die Bürgerinnen und Bürger hatten bei uns nicht nur die Möglichkeit, eigene Ideen zu entwickeln. Vielmehr sollen ihre Vorschläge auch tatsächlich in der Forschungsagenda des KIT be-

<figure><img src="image_8.png" /></figure>

Bildquelle: Sabine Arnutz

5 Fragen an
Herbert Paschen

Im Jahr 1995 Gründungsdirektor des Instituts für Technikfolgeabschätzung und Systemanalyse (ITAS) und im Jahr 1990 des Büros für Technikfolgen-Abschätzung beim Deutschen Bundestag (TAB)

Sie gelten als Wegbereiter der TA in Deutschland. Woher rührt Ihr Interesse für das Forschungsgebiet?

Bereits in den 1960er-Jahren hat eine öffentliche Debatte über ökologische Auswirkungen des Einsatzes neuer Techniken eingesetzt. Damit einher ging die Forderung, die Informationsgrundlagen für politische Entscheidungen zu verbessern. Das hatte großen Einfluss auf meine Arbeit in der Heidelberger Studiengruppe für Systemforschung und später für die TA in Karlsruhe.
Vorbild war das Office of Technology Assessment beim US-Kongress, zu dem ich auch persönliche Kontakte hatte.

Was ist für Sie Kern der politikberaten- den Technikfolgenabschätzung?

Den sehe ich in ihrem unmittelbaren Handlungs- und Entscheidungsbezug. Fester Bestandteil aller TA-Analysen ist die Entwicklung von Handlungsoptionen, z. B. gesetzliche Maßnahmen zur Verhinderung oder zur Förderung bestimmter Anwendungen einer neuen Technologie.

Mit dem TAB haben Sie den Grund- stein für die parlamentarische TA gelegt. Was überwog bei den Abge- ordneten, Begeisterung oder Skepsis?

Begeisterung war wenig zu spüren. Der Vorschlag der Enquete-Kommission sah einen

dreijährigen Modellversuch vor und wurde überwiegend skeptisch beurteilt. Qualität und Nutzen der in dieser ‚Probezeit‘ durchgeführten Projekte waren entscheidend für den Beschluss, die TA langfristig beim Deutschen Bundestag zu institutionalisieren.

KI-Technologien sind derzeit in aller Munde. Gibt es Zukunftstechnologien, die daneben zu wenig Beachtung finden?

Die digitale Transformation wird zweifellos tiefgreifende Auswirkungen in allen Bereichen der Gesellschaft haben. Die TA wird signifikante Beiträge zur Bewältigung dieser Herausforderungen zu leisten haben. Dies gilt auch für andere gesellschaftliche Zukunftsaufgaben, die ohne neue Technologien nicht zu lösen sind, z. B. ein klima-verträgliches Verkehrssystem.

Hand aufs Herz: Haben Sie bei der Einschätzung von Technikfolgen in Ihrer langen Karriere auch schon einmal danebengelegen?

Ich glaube, dass meinen früheren Mitarbeitern und Mitarbeitern und mir das erspart geblieben ist. Generell kann es aber leicht zu Fehlurteilen kommen, wenn es um Techniken mit potenziell weitreichenden, anfangs jedoch kaum abschätzbaren Folgen geht.

DETAILED VIDEO INTERVIEWS AVAILABLE AT www.tatup.de/youtube
Aus dem openTA-Kalender

**31. 01.–01. 02. 2024, PADERBORN**

4. Fachtagung Integrierte Forschung: Mensch-Technik-Verhältnisse transdisziplinär reflektieren und gestalten
integrierte-forschung.net/cluster/fachtagungen

**14.–16. 02. 2024, GRAZ**

18. Symposium Energieinnovation: Europas Energiezukunft – Sicher, leistbar, sauber!?!
www.tugraz.at/events/eninnov2024

**11.–12. 04. 2024, DRESDEN**

Konferenz ,Reallabore – ExperimentierRäume für den Weg in eine nachhaltige Gesellschaft'
www.ioer.de/veranstaltungen/rlnk2024

**06.–08. 05. 2024, GRAZ**

The 22nd annual STS conference Graz 2024, critical issues in science, technology and society studies'
www.stsconf.tugraz.at/

**09.–10. 05. 2024, KARLSRUHE**

17th society and materials conference (SAM17)
www.itas.kit.edu/english/events_2023_sam17

**23.–24. 05. 2024, BERLIN**

Tagung ,Expertise in digitaler Transformation' soziologie.de/aktuell/news/expertise-in-digitaler-transformation-mai-2024

**04.–07. 06. 2024, ENSCHEDE**

EU-SPRI Annual Conference 2024: Governing technology, research, and innovation for better worlds
www.utwente.nl/en/euspri2024/

WEITERE TERMINE UNTER www.openta.net/kalender

rücksichtigt werden“, so Marius Albiez, der am ITAS die Veranstaltung mitkonzipiert hat. „Beeindruckt von der Vielfalt der Ideen“ zeigte sich dementsprechend auch die neue Vizepräsidentin für Digitalisierung und Nachhaltigkeit des KIT, Professorin Kora Kristof, die bereits vor Ort mögliche Anknüpfungspunkte für die Forschung identifizierte und die Ergebnisse entgegennahm.

www.itas.kit.edu/buergerdialog

## REALLABORE

### Stellungnahme zu Reallabor-Gesetz

Das Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Klimaschutz (BMWK) will für die Interaktion von Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft in Reallaboren einen gesetzlichen Rahmen schaffen. Im Zusammenhang des Konsultationsprozesses zu der Gesetzesinitiative hat das Netzwerk ,Reallabore der Nachhaltigkeit‘ eine Stellungnahme veröffentlicht. „Die Reallabore-Gesetz-Initiative ist grundsätzlich begrüßenswert, letztlich aber kommt es auf deren konkrete Umsetzung an“, sagt

Oliver Parodi, der Sprecher des Netzwerks. „Wichtig sind hierbei“, so Parodi, „eine konsequente Nachhaltigkeitsorientierung, weitreichende Partizipation und ergebnisoffenes Experimentieren sowie das Grundverständnis, dass Reallabore dem gesellschaftlichen und wissenschaftlichen Lernen dienen.“ Das 2019 gegründete ,Netzwerk Reallabore der Nachhaltigkeit‘ versteht sich als Anlaufstelle und Plattform für Reallabore im deutschsprachigen Raum sowie für alle an nachhaltiger Entwicklung Interessierte. Es umfasst 50 Organisationen sowie über 80 aktive und abgeschlossene Reallabore.

www.reallabor-netzwerk.de

## PARLAMENTARISCHE TA

### EPTA-Konferenz in Barcelona

Generative künstliche Intelligenz war das Thema der diesjährigen EPTA-Konferenz. Die jährlich stattfindende Tagung der europäischen Vereinigung von Institutionen für parlamentarische TA fand am 9. Oktober 2023 in Barcelona statt. Vier Mitglieder des Deutschen Bundes-

tages waren angereist, um sich im katalanischen Parlament mit Forschenden und zahlreichen Abgeordneten anderer Parlamente über die neuesten Entwicklungen auf dem Gebiet der generativen KI und die Rolle der TA auszutauschen. Der New Yorker Psychologe und Neurowissenschaftler Gary Marcus zeigte in seiner Keynote bestehende Unzulänglichkeiten der Text- und Bildgeneratoren auf und mahnte eine verantwortungsvolle Weiterentwicklung an. Er plädierte zudem für eine verpflichtende Überprüfung von KI-Systemen durch unabhängige wissenschaftliche Institutionen. In drei Sessions wurden die Chancen, Risiken und Herausforderungen der Anwendungen in Bezug auf die Politikbereiche Gesundheit, Bildung und Arbeit diskutiert. Im Fokus stand zudem die Frage, wie die dynamicsche Entwicklung besser an demokratischen Werten ausgerichtet werden kann. Der auf der Konferenz vorgestellte EPTA-Bericht präsentiert die aktuellen Debatten über generative KI in den verschiedenen Ländern und die damit verbundenen Anforderungen an die Technikfolgenabschätzung.

www.parlament.cat (EPTA-Bericht und Videoaufzeichnung der Tagung)
## EUROPA

### Foresight für EU-Parlament

Der Wissenschaftliche Dienst des Europäischen Parlaments (EPRS) hat die Aufgabe, Abgeordnete mit wissenschaftlich fundierten Studien und Recherchen zu unterstützen. Um das Parlament künftig auch in den Themenfeldern ‚Strategic Foresight‘ und ‚Technikfolgenabschätzung‘ zu beraten, hat der EPRS im Juli 2023 einen Rahmenvertrag mit dem DLR Projektträger geschlossen. Dieser ist beim Deutschen Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt angesiedelt und arbeitet wiederum mit Unterauftragnehmern aus mehreren EU-Mitgliedsstaaten zusammen, etwa dem Institut für qualifizierende Innovationsforschung und -beratung (IQIB), dem Danish Board of Technology, der Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT) und der Stiftung für Technologiefolgen-Abschätzung TA-Swiss. Das Portfolio an möglichen Aufträgen umfasst neben Studien zu Foresight und TA auch Briefings für Mitglieder des Europäischen Parlaments. Außerdem soll der DLR Projektträger Veranstaltungen für Abgeordnete

oder Fachleute organisieren sowie Kommunikationsmaterialien erstellen.
[projekttraeger.dlr.de](http://projekttraeger.dlr.de)

## PUBLIKATION

### Blick in die Energie-Glaskugel

Der Sammelband ‚Zukunftswissen‘ fragt am Beispiel der Energiewirtschaft nach den Potenzialen prospektiver Erkenntnis. Die Beiträge des auf einer Tagung der Ruhr-Universität Bochum basierenden Bands kommen aus vielfältigen Fachrichtungen, von der Technikfolgenabschätzung über die Technikphilosophie und Ökonomik bis hin zur Literaturwissenschaft. Aus TA-Perspektive interessieren insbesondere die Beiträge von Armin Grunwald und Gesine Lenore Schiewer. Für ersteren ist die Validität von Energieszenarien vor allem eine Frage nach ihrem Zustandekommen und damit nach den ihnen zugrundeliegenden normativen Annahmen, Visionen und Utopien. Armin Grunwald setzt sich zudem kritisch mit der Annahme auseinander, es gäbe eine

datenbasierte ‚beste Lösung‘, die von politischen Entscheiderinnen und Entscheidern nur noch verwirklicht werden müsse. Gesine Lenore Schiewer, Lehrstuhlinhaberin für Interkulturelle Germanistik an der Universität Bayreuth, nimmt in ihrem Beitrag ‚Emotionen als Komponente der Zukunftsforschung‘ in den Blick. Sie weist unter anderem darauf hin, dass bestimmte Emotionen wie ‚Angst‘ im Kontext der Zukunftsforschung häufiger aufgegriffen werden als positive Gefühlsregungen.

<figure><img src="image_9.png" /></figure>

Mackasare. Manuel (Hg.)

**Zukunftswissen?** Potenziale prospektiver
Erkenntnis am Beispiel der Energiewirtschaft.
Berlin: J. B. Metzler, 2023, 370 S., 74,99 €,
ISBN 9783662667552

## Personalia

Bildquelle: M. Pollert/Wuppertal Institut

<figure><img src="image_10.png" /></figure>

MELANIE SPECK, Professorin an der Hochschule Osnabrück und Senior Researcherin im Forschungsbereich Produkt- und Konsumsysteme am Wuppertal Institut, unterstützt künftig den ersten Bürgerrat des Deutschen Bundestags. Der Bürgerrat beschäftigt sich in den kommenden Monaten mit dem Thema ‚Ernährung im Wandel – Zwischen Privatangelegenheit und staatlichen Aufgaben‘. Zusammen mit zehn weiteren Forschenden wurde Melanie Speck von den Fraktionen benannt, um die Arbeit der per Los ermittelten Bürgerinnen und Bürger zu begleiten. Speck forscht unter anderem zur Nachhaltigkeitsbewertung und zur gesellschaftlichen Transformation in Ernährungssystemen.

Bildquelle: OTH Regensburg/Michael Hitze

<figure><img src="image_11.png" /></figure>

KARSTEN WEBER ist in den wissenschaftlichen Beirat für den Forschungsbereich ‚Information‘ am Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT) berufen worden. Das Gremium steht dem KIT-Vorstand beratend zur Seite, begleitet die laufende Forschung und hat ‚einen starken Einfluss auf strategische Entscheidungen zur Forschungsausrichtung im Bereich Information‘. Karsten Weber, der selbst in Karlsruhe promoviert hat, lehrt und forscht seit 2013 an der OTH Regensburg und ist dort Co-Leiter des Instituts für Sozialforschung und Technikfolgenabschätzung (IST). Im Oktober 2022 hat Weber die Forschungsprofessur ‚Technikfolgenabschätzung für KI-gestützte Mobilität‘ an der OTH Regensburg übernommen.

<figure><img src="image_12.png" /></figure>

ARMIN GRUNWALD hat den Bad Herrenalber Akademiepreis für das von ihm geleitete Institut für Technikfolgenabschätzung und Systemanalyse (ITAS) entgegengenommen. Die Auszeichnung würdigt die Verdienste der TA in Karlsruhe um den Dialog zwischen Wissenschaft, Gesellschaft und Theologie. Gernot Meier, der kommissarische Direktor der Akademie, hob die bedeutsame Rolle hervor, die das ITAS bei der Beratung von Politik und Öffentlichkeit erlangt habe. Eine Rolle, mit der das Institut und sein Leiter aber bescheiden umgehen würden: „Statt technokratisch [...] Lösungen mit der Autorität der Wissenschaft zu empfehlen, wird stets die Notwendigkeit alternativer Optionen und Meinungen [...] betont“, so Meier.
# Technology hype: Dealing with bold expectations and overpromising

Technologie-Hype:

Der Umgang mit überzogenen Erwartungen und Versprechungen

Edited by J. Bareis, M. Roßmann, and F. Bordignon

<figure><img src="image_13.png" /></figure>
## INTRODUCTION

# Technology hypes: Practices, approaches and assessments

Jascha Bareis*<sup>1,2</sup> ID, Maximilian Roßmann<sup>3</sup> ID, Frédérique Bordignon<sup>4,5</sup> ID

**Abstract** • To date, the study of hype has become a productive but also eclectic field of research. This introduction provides an overview of the core characteristics of technology hype and distinguishes it from other future-oriented concepts. Further, the authors present promising approaches from various disciplines for studying, critiquing, and dealing with hype. The special issue assembles case studies, methodological and theoretical contributions that analyze tech hypes' temporality, agency, and institutional dynamics. It provides insights into how hypes are triggered and fostered, but also how they can be deconstructed and anticipated.

**Technologie-Hypes:** Praktiken, Ansätze und Abschätzungen

**Zusammenfassung** • Mit der Erforschung von Hypes ist ein produktives, aber auch vielschichtiges Forschungsfeld entstanden. Ziel dieser Einführung ist es, einen Überblick über die zentralen Merkmale von Technologie-Hypes zu geben und diese von anderen zukunftsorientierten Konzepten abzugrenzen. Darüber hinaus stellen die Autor*innen vielversprechende Ansätze aus verschiedenen Disziplinen zur Untersuchung, Antizipation und zum Umgang mit Hype vor. Das Sonderheft versammelt Fallstudien, methodische und theoretische Beiträge, die die Zeitlichkeit, das Handeln und die institutionelle Dynamik von Tech-Hypes analysieren. Es bietet Einblicke, wie Hypes ausgelöst und gefördert werden, aber auch wie sie dekonstruiert und antizipiert werden können.

**Keywords** • hype, overpromising, expectations, emerging technology

This article is part of the Special topic "Technology hype: Dealing with bold expectations and overpromising" edited by J. Bareis, M. Roßmann and F. Bordignon. https://doi.org/10.14512/tatup.32.3.10

"Hyper! Hyper!
We need the bass drum!
Come on!"<fnref n="1" />

## Introduction

Technology assessment (TA) has been highly productive in discussing the power and problems of technology expectations, futuristic communication, and their overpromising. Situating TA in societal context, ranging from political debates to the attention economy in social media, sheds light not only on the analysis of hype but also on the 'modulation' of visions to reach wider audiences. This may include unheard or neglected voices and arguments in technology development and its critiques, e.g., to reach sustainable development goals (Dierkes et al. 1996; Grunwald 2015; Rip 2006; Schneider et al. 2023).

In contrast to 'vision' or 'expectation', calling technology 'hype' is both descriptive and action-guiding. It suggests a temporal dynamic of attention and confidence in projected technological change – an increase followed by a decrease – and points to the question of inappropriate attitude and reaction, given the context of a debate. At stake are taking poor public policy decisions, misdirecting financial resources, the lack of studying more pressing societal consequences, and, more generally, jeopardizing trust in science (Intemann 2020; Löfstedt 2003).

However, TA has never been alone in developing methods to study and find a response to technology hype. This Special topic in the *Journal for Technology Assessment in Theory and Practice* seeks to highlight the variety of approaches from dif-

<figure><img src="image_14.png" /></figure>

<footnote n="1">1 "Hyper Hyper" is a song by German band Scooter, released in May 1994 from their debut album, "... and the Beat Goes On!" (1995).</footnote>

<footnote>* Corresponding author: jascha.bareis@kit.edu</footnote>

<footnote n="1">¹ Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, DE</footnote>

<footnote n="2">² Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, Berlin, DE</footnote>

<footnote n="3">³ Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASoS), Maastricht University, Maastricht, NL</footnote>

<footnote n="4">⁴ École des Ponts ParisTech, Marne-la-Vallée, FR</footnote>

<footnote n="5">⁵ LISIS, INRAE, Univ Gustave Eiffel, CNRS, Marne-la-Vallée, FR</footnote>
ferent disciplines and the internationality of cases. Herewith
the issue contributes to a better understanding of temporalities,
agency, and institutional dynamics that provoke, fuel and main-
tain hypes, and provides knowledge to better anticipate, decon-
struct and criticize them.

Joint efforts to narrow down the phenom-
enon: dimensions and characteristics
of technology hypes

Rhetorics and the emotional appeal
of overpromising language

By means of bold statements, superlatives and exaggerated
claims, hypes appeal to emotions to seek attention. Historical
analogies to break-throughs or reference to fictional literature
serve tech-evangelists to claim proficiency and reliable guidance
in uncertain times. Cherishing narratives of approaching disrup-
tions suggest societal roles and call for requirements to be met,
so a specific goal can be achieved (Mische 2014; Van Lente and
Rip 1998). People often share technology narratives for the sake
of excitement, however, often ignoring how they assemble and
change the meaning of arguments, facts, and data, e.g. at a sce-
nario workshop (Roßmann 2021).

Ideally, “imagination under constraints” of beliefs and sci-
entific knowledge allow for societal learning (Kind 2016, p. 3).
The simulated experience of technological consequences (by
means of illustrative imagery, or stories in place of an argumen-
tation) reaches wider audiences and can help to bridge bounda-
ries between disciplines, publics and institutions (Dierkes et al.
1996; Lösch 2006). However, by means of emotional appeal and
dramatization, narrative communication can also bypass the ra-
tional assessment of statements (Green and Brock 2000). This

potentially conflicting communication aims. It urges us to care-
fully consider the context, speech positions and audience, when
technological novelties are announced.

Temporality and the play with attention spans

The three ‘musketeers’ of rhetoric – *ethos*, *pathos* and *logos* –
are occasionally supplemented by *kairos*, which is the oppor-
tune moment for action. Hypes gain their real performative mo-
mentum by pointing to vast opportunities that lie ahead, which
ask for the right timing if great potentials shall not be lost. Hence,
temporality is a crucial dimension for understanding and negoti-
ating technology expectations.

Popular technology narratives structure salient societal dis-
courses on technology and usually refer to bigger time-spans.
The studies of socio-technical imaginaries (Jasanoff and Kim
2009), for example, reveal differences in common understand-
ings of technology projects in society, informing about hopes
and concerns in project proposals or policy papers that consider
large future trajectories (e.g. see Bareis and Katzenbach 2022
for staging Artificial Intelligence; or Mosco 2005 for the study
of the cyberspace metaphor).

Technology hypes, however, radically focus on temporal
prominence. Stressing the opportunity costs is a distinctive fea-
ture of hypers, who urge followers to act instantly, take risks
and think boldly. Thereby hype narrows down remembrances
of the past and, likewise, future trajectories to come. While nar-
ratives, visions and imaginaries rather mark the cultural back-
ground that persists over a longer period of time, technology
hypes foreground peak and outlier achievements of tech devel-
opment. Hereby, they give relevance to certain claims for only a
limited period of time. Hypers are the opportunists among fu-
ture tellers, who ride on the wave of attention and are less inter-
ested in the long-term societal consequences of what happens

Hypes appeal to emotions to seek attention.

emotional celebration of statements is characteristic of hype –
and risks turning an informative and appealing story into a sen-
sationalist one.

Social media has further increased this phenomenon. Big
tech platforms reinforce outreach and attention to a topic by
a system of likes, shares, hails and reposts. Here, research has
shown that communication and algorithmic content modera-
tion on platforms supports sensationalism and click-baiting. It
is emotional and controversial posts, and especially visual ma-
terial over factual and descriptive content, that become featured
in timelines by users (Gillespie 2018; Gorwa et al. 2020). Such
attention-seeking logic on platforms certainly contributes to an
environment that nourishes hyping as it elicits emotional appeal
and impulsive action over critical reflection.

Given this large influence of language, deliberate and respon-
sible communication about technology requires reflection about

when the wave collapses. Comparing hype cycles therefore stud-
ies the attention and popularity of technologies and their claims
by means of time-row analysis of publication counts in news-
papers or social media, citation counts, or patent applications
(Dedehayir and Steinert 2016). One can also draw on discourse
analysis or stakeholder interviews, for instance to assess confi-
dence in stock market trends. The representation of a hype cy-
cle according to Gartner Consulting, which follows the evolve-
ment of hype from an attention trigger, over a peak of inflated
expectations, to a trough of disillusionment – until state of af-
fairs stabilize in a plateau of productivity, is particularly pop-
ular (Linden and Fenn 2003). Though, due to its missing em-
pirical validation, weak theoretical grounding, and instrumen-
tal use for claiming future developments with the authority of a
seemingly scientific representation, Rip (2006) calls the model
a “folk theory” (p. 362).
Time is a crucial factor in the phenomenon of hype – both as a constitutive feature (hypes need the future trajectory in order to gain momentum), and also as an analytical dimension (e.g., when studying the attention span in the building up and waning of a hype).

## Impression management and the creation of followership and collaboration

The possibility to learn from imagining futures and to influence how others imagine them with pretense practices, invites various stakeholders for strategic actions and engage in the “politics of expectations” (Beckert 2016, p. 79). Recalling *kairos* above: Observing a trend as hype points to a short window of

spectives and indicating how one would act if a certain scenario unfolds, generates a common ground for individuals or organizations to understand each other and plan with mutual assurances. Two extreme poles can be distinguished that both allow for coordination: either a situation of mutual trust, where stakeholders understand and rely on each other, or the situation of mistrust, when all statements about the future are perceived as strategic performances resulting from profit or power striving. The study of hypes and overpromising provides insights into popular expectations and their reactions. Mische (2014) suggests developing digital methods to study ‘projective grammars’ that can further indicate e.g., the perceived openness and attitude of different actors to shape or collaborate in the future.

> *Hypes gain their real performative momentum by pointing to vast opportunities that lie ahead, which ask for the right timing if great potentials shall not be lost.*

opportunity to instrumentally exploit the attention for one's own purpose. Especially on social media, the strategic use of certain buzzwords, hashtags and prefixes, like *AI*, *nano-*, *smart-*, or *green-*, helps actors to reach a wider audience, even though actors know that there is little or no shared understanding of the term (Bensaude Vincent 2014). The relationship between leaders and their followers is shaped sustainably by 'impression management' that instills attention and authority in promises about products, applications, or tech-companies. It becomes visible when one follows actors and objects across different sites, revealing differences between 'front region' performances and statements and actions 'backstage' in team meetings or the laboratory (Goffman 1990, p. 69). Technology presentations, such as the release of a new iPhone (Sharma and Grant 2011) or the advertisement of air-taxis (Woznica 2022) strategically highlight and disguise expectations. As 'narrative accelerators' they fuel public discourse and can further bloat an emerging bubble (Goldfarb and Kirsch 2019). In interaction with their own communities of practice, scientists tend to easily reject certain visions but still strategically use these narratives to gain funding or legitimacy from politicians (Selin 2007). Birch (2017), therefore, understands not the expectations of successful technological applications but the expectation to increase the value of research assets, such as networks, laboratory equipment, or topical knowledge, as a major driving force in techno-scientific capitalism. The economic, social, and cultural capital required for (strategic) 'future making' also sheds light on unequal speaker positions to advocate for neglected concerns or more 'profane' and less technocentric visions, such as job opportunities (Sand 2019).

Finally, imagined futures serve as a projective space to coordinate actions (Van Lente and Rip 1998). Sharing problem per-

Although our call for papers drew attention to the fact that digitization of mass media also necessitates a revision of methods for studying imagined futures and that we are particularly interested in computational methods, we received hardly any submissions from this field. In our opinion, TA is a welcoming interdisciplinary niche for experimenting with new methodological approaches. We would therefore call our colleagues to follow up, e.g., with the study of hype language in scientific publications by word lists (Bordignon et al. 2021; Millar et al. 2019; Vinkers et al. 2015), or with the use of metrics of significance (like citation surge or betweenness centrality) to identify emerging trends and potential hypes (Chen 2006; Chen et al. 2012).

## Dealing with hype: How and when to intervene?

Actors can be stuck in 'lock-ins' when promises call for action and stakeholders are on the spot to deliver on their bold claims. Such lock-ins hinder organizations to acknowledge 'uncomfortable knowledge' or to share relevant information, which can spur worrisome trajectories based on misguided beliefs (Rayner 2012). Exchanging expectations about potential but unproven harms or benefits of technology is indispensable for reflecting about societal change, though. It is the realm of shared imagined futures that allows for debates, self-reflection and strategic planning about the use and misuse of technology and their societal consequences.

How, though, can we assess when a red line is crossed regarding economic market power and an overheated discursive situation? When do some players gain too much attention and lock society in unwanted path-dependencies? Assessing the dis-
course on Nanoethics, Nordmann (2007) prominently warned of
the looming danger of futuristic ‘tunnel visions’ that draw all at-
tention and ‘ethical resources’ away from other, more pressing
issues. Also, Vinsel (2021) understands the criti-hype as an aca-
demic business model. Others argue that it may only be right that
TA not only analyzes but speaks out for the instrumental use of
visions, e.g., to foster democratic values and sustainable devel-
opment goals (Dierkes et al. 1996; Schneider et al. 2023). Grun-
wald (2010) argued that enabling public debates about technol-
ogy in society makes imaginaries available for technology devel-
opment and can, thus, justify or outweigh the danger of tunnel
visions. However, the question remains when and why such an
instrumental use of imagined futures becomes inappropriate.
Auch (2013) suggests that there is no checklist answer but we

sented in national strategies. Their analysis considers how this
policy discourse is collaboratively shaped by scientists, poli-
ticians, and industry. They challenge current models of hype
in science and innovation, mainly the Gartner hype cycle, and
propose the 'hype helix', a model that captures the cyclical and
iterative nature of hype in research.

Arora and Sarkar endeavor to go beyond hype as a discursive process by redescribing it also as a mnemonic device. They show how tech hype, when applied to emerging technologies like blockchain, can influence the way complex societal problems, such as land rights in India, are (mis-)remembered. Their study highlights the danger of oversimplification and selective presentation of benefits – mainly a solution to corruption and an improvement of land titles management – which overlooks the

Actors can be stuck in 'lock-ins' when promises
call for action and stakeholders are on the spot
to deliver on their bold claims.

can only train our ‘virtue of proportionality’. As Dani Shanley
illustrates in her TATuP interview (this issue), the history of TA
and Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) also provides
some learnings on this.

An even more hands-on treatment of technology hypes would
be the building of scenario pathways. Here, policy makers can
discuss potential future trajectories and ground lofty discourses
with plausibility. This helps them to assess the complexity and
ambiguity of future developments and structure messy and con-
tradictory future discussions. The benefits are manifold. Policy
makers can escape dominant thought patterns and dive into dif-
ferent epistemic and power positions of actors in society, giving
space to silenced and neglected discourses. The biggest bene-
fit of scenarios in the context of hype, though, is to strengthen
one's own strategic orientation in the midst of societal crisis, or
technology glorification by some attention-seeking actor. The
knowledge about different scenarios allows policy makers a
strategic-resilient treatment of exuberant promises, encourag-
ing them not to jump on every bandwagon a tech-hype proclaims.

Presentation of the volume

The contributors to this TATuP Special topic have used differ-
ent methods to respond to our call to deconstruct technological
hypes: Some have developed an original analytical framework,
others have used interviews and field observations, some have
proposed case studies, and finally a few others have also supple-
mented their study with a quantitative approach.

Roberson et al. examine the dynamics of hype in the field
of quantum technology by deconstructing core arguments pre-

complexities and nuances of India's land tenure system and the
potential negative consequences for marginalized groups.

In his study of exaggerations in debates surrounding social
experiments, Neuwinger also finds a tendency among both advo-
cates and critics to overstate benefits and understate risks. This
stems from a reductive, tool-based mindset that glosses over
complexity by equating social experiments with drug trials, and
solely defining impact in causal terms.

Züger et al. demonstrate how the performative nature of ex-
pectations has significant implications for actors within the pub-
lic interest AI field. Their research, employing case studies and
interviews, unveils the paradoxical position of actors in public
interest initiatives. While they gain support and benefit from the
community-building which fosters AI hype, they also maintain
a critical stance, acknowledging the risks of unreliable funding
and emphasizing the priority of addressing societal needs.

Kari et al. leverage the sociology of expectations perspective to offer valuable insights into the intricate interplay of hype and promises within the domain of nuclear technologies, particularly small modular reactors (SMRs). With the analysis of publication counts and ‘hype language’ in a Finnish newspaper, they highlight the crucial role of techno-scientific promising in shaping innovation trajectories. They show how the media serves as a key arena where proponents and critics battle over SMRs promises (e.g., cutting carbon emissions and enhancing energy security) leading to SMR topicality, hyping, and eventual deconstruction.

Meunier and Herzog clarify the relationship between a long-
term socio-technical imaginary, such as precision medicine, and
shorter-term technological hypes, including advancements in
omics and AI technologies. They consider that an improvement
in the assessment of precision medicine requires a cautious and
realistic approach that considers the long-term developments, including previous disappointments, as well as limitations that have hindered the realization of promises being made.

Both Frisch and Gaillard et al. unpack the concept of over-
promising and provide new definitions. Frisch sees overpromis-
ing as a distinct feature of companies’ imagined business futures
in response to decarbonization pressure. He suggests that over-
promises emerge from contradictions between a company’s in-
evitable profit orientation, the exaggeration and misrepresenta-
tion of an organization’s estimated potential to restructure it-
self, and the systemic pressure and bandwagon of performative
commitments. Eventually, promoting optimistic narratives about
achieving a decarbonized economy can paradoxically hinder cli-
mate action by creating a false sense of achievement and delay-
ing necessary measures.

Gaillard et al. explore overpromising as a common feature of scientific discourse, particularly in fields such as nanoscience. In their multidisciplinary approach, combining signaling theory, philosophy of promising, and science studies research on scientific communication, they put forth a conceptualization that facilitates the identification and assessment of overpromises. They emphasize the importance of considering the context of knowledge available when assessing promises and delineating the crucial factors for assessing the plausibility of claims being made.

Some of the case studies that the authors have chosen to pres-
ent raise issues that ethicists should help to address. But accord-
ing to Pichl, ethicists can also contribute to hype as she shows
in an investigation within the field of stem cells, where thera-
peutic promises are often used as moral arguments for funding
and research-friendly regulation. Pichl’s research article clearly
demonstrates how this contributes to the hype surrounding stem
cell research and its potential applications. To avoid contribut-
ing to hype, the article argues, ethicists must critically examine
future visions and promises, be aware of their own performative
role, and cooperate more closely with disciplines like STS and
TA to contextualize analyses within socio-technical dimensions.

We conclude by expressing our gratitude to all the review-
ers who contributed to improving the quality of the manuscripts
with their constructive comments, and by wishing (with no over-
promising) that the readers of this TATuP Special topic will find
both inspiration and answers for future work.

**Funding** • This work was partially funded by the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme of the European Union, H2020-ERC-2020-SyG – Grant Agreement No. 951393

**Competing interests** • The authors declare no competing interests.

References

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Bareis, Jascha; Katzenbach, Christian (2022): Talking AI into being. The narratives and imaginaries of national AI strategies and their performative politics.

In: Science, Technology, & Human Values 47 (5), pp. 855–881. https://doi.org/10.1177/01622439211030007

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<figure><img src="image_15.png" /></figure>

JASCHA BAREIS

is a researcher at the Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS) at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and associate researcher at the Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG) since 2020. He is a political scientist whose passion lies at the crossroads of studying AI policy, algorithmic culture and future visions.

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DR. MAXIMILIAN ROSSMANN

is a post-doc at Maastricht University and studies how hypes and narratives influence technology development and hinder error-correction in science. He graduated in chemical engineering and philosophy and worked on the Vision Assessment of 3D printing, microalgae nutrition, and nuclear waste management at ITAS.

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DR. FRÉDÉRIQUE BORDIGNON

is a researcher at Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire Sciences Innovations Sociétés (LISIS), bibliometrician at École des Ponts ParisTech, and ethics trainer. She is a linguist by training and studies academic writing, scholarly literature and correction of science.
# Assessing the journey of technology hype in the field of quantum technology

Tara Roberson*<sup>1,2</sup> , Sujatha Raman<sup>2</sup> , Joan Leach<sup>2</sup>, Samantha Wilkins<sup>2,3</sup>

**Abstract** • The 'second quantum revolution' promises new technologies enabled by quantum physics and has been the subject of substantial hype. We show that while creating expectations has helped secure support for quantum research, their iterative effects can come to affect the field in concrete ways. These iterative impacts for quantum include emerging discussions about ethics and the delivery of promised outcomes. Such contestations could open up alternative quantum futures, but this will depend on how the 'hype helix' of iterative expectations unfolds.

## Bewertung der Entwicklung des Technologie-Hypes im Bereich der Quantentechnologie

**Zusammenfassung** • Die ,zweite Quantenrevolution' verspricht neue, durch Quantenphysik ermöglichte Technologien und hat einen großen Hype ausgelöst. Die durch diesen Hype geweckten Erwartungen haben zu erheblichen Spekulationen und Investitionen von Nationalstaaten und Unternehmen geführt. Wir zeigen, dass das Schüren von Erwartungen zwar die Forschung im Bereich der Quantenphysik vorangebracht hat, ihre iterativen Auswirkungen jedoch auf unerwartete Weise nachwirken können. Es tauchen auch umfassendere Fragen zu Quanten auf, die sich mit Ethik, Energie-Fußabdrücken und unmöglichen Versprechen befassen. Diese Auseinandersetzungen könnten im Prinzip alternative Quantenzukünfte eröffnen, dies wird allerdings davon abhängen, wie sich die ,Hype-Helix' der iterativen Erwartungen entfaltet.

**Keywords** • hype, iterative expectations, quantum technology

This article is part of the Special topic "Technology hype: Dealing with bold expectations and overpromising" edited by J. Bareis, M. Roßmann and F. Bordignon. https://doi.org/10.14512/tatup.32.3.10

## Introduction

Hype – or the use of exaggerated, sensational language to create narratives about the future impact of science and technology – has been central to building social and material support for the field of quantum technology. Quantum technologies draw on quantum science to build a range of applications around the world (Gibney 2019). The technologies – including quantum computers, quantum sensors, and quantum key distribution – are the subject of much hype (Roberson 2021). Similar to artificial intelligence, quantum technology is considered a critical technology by several nations due to the potential technical capability – a 'step change' – and the potential for vast economic gain.

We draw on published empirical research to examine how quantum hype is shaped by the interaction between scientific promises and national-strategic visions. We contribute to the wider field of enquiry around hype in proposing that the process of hype in research is not so much one-way as it cyclical – providing feedback to the actors who spark these conversations in new and sometimes unanticipated ways. This new model is described as a 'hype helix'. We use this model as we consider how the language used by physicists to describe the 'second quantum revolution' is shifting through the introduction of uncertainty (pessimism) and incorporation of new concerns and issues. Furthermore, we review how quantum hype discourse prompts iterative effects, including international conversations on the societal impacts of quantum technologies led by forums that include the World Economic Forum. Our research points to the fact that, while hype is an effective mechanism for scientists to achieve support for their research, hyped promises can be adopted by government and returned to scientists in the form of expectations that scientists must attempt to fulfil.

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<footnote>* Corresponding author: tara.roberson@qut.edu.au</footnote>

<footnote n="1">¹ Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems, University of Queensland, Brisbane, AU</footnote>

<footnote n="2">² Australian National Centre for Public Awareness of Science (CPAS), Australian National University, Canberra, AU</footnote>

<footnote n="3">³ Digital Media Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, AU</footnote>
## The management of expectations and hype

Hype consists of promises of new benefits or outcomes from science and innovation, which are articulated in present-day research agendas (Birch et al. 2012; McCray 2013). This language and the resulting work that researchers do to manage stakeholder expectations is integral to the creation and evolution of science and technology fields. Schyfter and Calvert (2015) explore the interplay of hype and inflated expectations in their work on synthetic biology – a field shaped by promised-laden rhetoric on the delivery of biotechnology and the creation of a new industry. These promises towards synthetic biology, in turn, influenced stakeholder expectations and forcefully directed research into narrow, now pre-determined, focus areas.

Use of hype is complicated by side-effects that scientists cannot control, e.g. how the expectations they create will be received by other audiences. Public communication on benefits or results of scientific research and/or technological developments invite response from stakeholders in the field and wider audiences (Ettenhuber 2008). These responses to hype are influenced by societal contexts people exist within; a critical concern in a digitally-connected world (Davis and Jurgenson 2014; Marwick and Boyd 2011). This necessitates careful management and moderation of hype. Examples of expectations management relevant to this area include the method of ‘recalibration’ in biomedical innovation (Gardner et al. 2015), which seeks to contain the hope and despair experienced by patients seeking cures (Petersen et al. 2017), and the deliberate use of pessimism by biotech firms looking to counterbalance optimism (Tutton 2011). The case of quantum technologies in this paper is another example of how overpromising is moderated and managed by multiple stakeholders.

## Tracking the modulation of the quantum hype

Current models for hype in science and innovation describe the journey of hype in relation to science popularisation models by charting how a topic moves from specialised to non-specialised audiences. These models – including the industry-focused ‘gartner hype cycle’, which depicts how exaggerate expectations and claims surrounding emerging technology rise and fall – assume that the cycle or wave of hype occurs once (n.a. 2015). They do not explicitly account for the iterative effect of expectations or the way an audience might respond to exaggeration. Nor do they generally incorporate a mechanism for the recalibration or moderation of expectations. Konrad and Alvial Pavavicino (2017) do, however, implicitly allude to the need to modulate expectations while charting the evolution of hype for graphene. To build on and improve these models, we propose the hype helix (figure 1).

In the hype helix, expectations rise (‘high expectations’) and fall (‘low expectations’) as they travel through time, and be-

tween creator and audience. Incorporating the fluctuations proposed by other literature on hype, the spiral of the helix depicts highs and lows of attention and exaggerated expectations, and then reflects on how expectations return to their creators. The helix also depicts how expectations shift in form and function as they progress between different actors and audiences within various contexts.

In figure 1 (below), we exemplify how this model might work in various cases of science and innovation by labelling the stages of high and low expectations which transpired within our research. In this edition of the hype helix, we focus on the quantum hype. We represent two stages of hype through time for quantum technology. The first loop begins with the coining of the ‘second quantum revolution’ and reflects on how promises for quantum technologies rose in the early 2000s. The second loop begins with the experimental breakthrough in 2014, which created a launchpad for new, heightened expectations for the field. This process of contestation and expectation management for quantum by scientists, government, and industry is explored in this paper, after the methods section.

## Method

As advocates for a new technological field, quantum scientists and engineers have rhetorically managed the uncertainty related to timelines and outcomes by using statements focused on significant benefits for audiences in science policy, politics, and industry. We consider the dynamics of hype surrounding quantum and the technologies the field aims to produce (‘quantum technologies’), using on rhetorical analysis to deconstruct the core arguments presented in national strategies for quantum science. This allows us to explore the way this policy discourse was co-created by scientists, politicians, and industry (Ploeger 2009).

We draw on empirical data from a study we published in 2021 (Roberson et al. 2021) and data collected during the first author’s doctoral research (Roberson 2020). The data included public documents published during the formation and finalisation of three national strategies for quantum science in the UK, USA, and Canada along with interviews with four physicists who were involved in the creation of one or more national strategies. These interviews provided additional depth to the situated rhetorical analysis of the strategy documents, including specific insight into the development of the strategies and the role hype played.

## Following the Helix model: creation and moderation of expectations by physicists

Close reading of the quantum national strategy documents revealed that the rhetoric of economic gain and competition was routinely emphasised. This is in line with broader trends in re-
search policy (Felt 2014) and previous work on high-energy physics (Ploeger 2009). This style of rhetoric matters because it influences the development of the research field and the evolution of distinct future trajectories. Competition-focused rhetoric frames science as a game or race between groups and drives preoccupation with whether a researcher/research team is winning or losing (Roberson 2020). Media coverage focused on the development of useful quantum computing provides an example of this rhetoric. Meanwhile, economic-focused rhetoric argues that a core value of basic research is its capacity to enable economic growth, leading to a focus on market benefits and risks. Through this rhetoric, a technoscientific future marked by geopolitical rivalry and market-based economics comes to be produced and reinforced, at least so long as it goes unchallenged.

Documents produced during the development of national strategies for quantum show how expectations for quantum technologies originated within research and industry communities before they were adopted by governments. For example, a key meeting at Chicheley Hall in the United Kingdom led by the UK Defence Science and Technology Laboratory produced a researcher-led report (Pritchard and Till 2014) and subsequent government-issued policy documents on the value of quantum technology for the nation.

However, as these expectations circulated through different social groups worldwide, quantum hype met opposition with the views of the quantum physics research community (Das Sarma 2022). This echoes the findings of Schyfter and Calvert (2015) in terms of the iterative relationship between hype created by researchers and subsequent expectations of key stakeholders, in this case government and industry. Around 2014, initial hype fostered an atmosphere of urgency around quantum technologies. This provoked interest amongst policymakers and parliamentarians and prompted national investment and coordination efforts. In recent years (2019 onwards), however, expectations have returned to researchers in the form of questions around the dangers posed by the 'quantum arms race' and a need for more detail around the implications of using quantum technologies in society (Inglesant et al. 2021).

Interviews with physicists involved in the creation of national strategies for quantum science provide some additional context on the iterative evolution of quantum hype and expectations. The nationalist focus found in the documents analysed was largely absent in the responses of interviewees, although one (senior quantum physicist) said “the element of competition was a strong focus for the United States and United Kingdom” (Roberson 2020, p. 110). Physicists preferred discussion

on the need to grow a critical mass with regards to enabling the presence of skilled workers and production of research, which would help produce crucial early-stage prototypes and, eventually, commercially viable machines while nurturing the emerging sector.

Reflecting on the hype which accompanied greater investment and interest in quantum commercial outcomes, scientists tended to highlight the uncertainty of future predictions for quantum technology. While some academic questions for quantum science may have been achieved, the physicists were quick to highlight the potential obstacles on the road ahead. They highlighted “continuing high levels of uncertainty around the eventual applications of quantum physics” (Roberson 2020, p. 110).

Alternately fearful and hopeful expectations generated around quantum technologies are likely to play some part in how public narratives evolved (Borup et al. 2006; Schyfter and Calvert 2015). The statements provided by physicists through research interviews in 2018–2019 may be part of conscious attempts to intervene in relation to extreme expectations with the intention of preventing potential disappointment (Eames et al. 2006). In this research article, we develop upon this perspective by presenting a new model of how hype occurs in communication on science and technology.

Expectations crafted by quantum scientists iteratively returned to impact on the field. The original audiences of the expectations – including, government, private companies, and other professional bodies – are taking seriously the chance that quantum computing – and quantum technology more broadly – may negatively impact society. An example of this altered state is visible in World Economic Forum discussions and a subsequent report on the quantum computing ethics (WEF 2021). This is despite some physicists’ fears that it is too early yet to

<figure><img src="image_19.png" /><figcaption>Fig. 1: Hype helix with stages mapped to public communication of quantum technologies.</figcaption></figure>

Source: authors' own compilation
seriously review the societal impacts of quantum technology. The influence of geopolitical tension is also visible in government policies focused, perhaps pre-emptively, on export control of quantum technologies and enforcement of sovereignty (Williams 2021).

Concerns over the impact of hype on academia and quantum start-ups has also been rising and physicists have responded with attempts to moderate language used in the field. In 2019, an article in Nature tracked the scale of private investment in quantum technology start-up companies (Gibney 2019). They found that in 2017 and 2018 alone companies received at least 450 million US dollars in private funding, mostly from venture capitalists. Looking forward a few years and in 2021 quantum computing company PsiQuantum raised another million US dollars again, a sum of money which brings its total valuation up to 3.15 billion US dollars. Researchers interviewed for the Nature article worried about the hype, saying “there’s a lot of hype in the field, a lot of promises that on the face of it look a little ridiculous, and some of that gets funded” (Gibney 2019, p. 24). In response to similar concerns over hype, some researchers began an anonymous Twitter account called the ‘Quantum Bullshit Detector’, which aims to dispel high expectations by retweeting hyped claims and marking them ‘bullshit’ (Chen 2019).

## Conclusion

As new developments have emerged in the field of quantum technology, the journey of hype for the field has included framing, and then re-framing of developments and promised outcomes within stories of potential success (Borup et al. 2006). The hype helix we present in this article builds upon key literature, including Schyfter and Calvert’s (2015) observation that promises for science and technology futures build iteratively, affecting first the organisations lobbied by researchers and then the researchers themselves in turn. By proposing the hype helix, we suggest a different way of conceptualising and modelling the role of hype in technoscientific work. Further investigation and testing of the model are needed to review how well it charts technoscientific hype in other fields.

This research article portrayed the process how expectations of quantum are taken up by nations. These expectations in turn have generated discomfort amongst researchers and tensions between national visions and academic research. We have charted how high and low expectations emerged in different stages of public communication about the quantum field. As represented in the hype helix, expectations rose upwards initially in the early- to mid-2000s. This hype has informed a long-running narrative designed to deliver increased support for quantum.

We note that efforts and intervention to modulate initial promises are undertaken by scientists, and, as a consequence, lowered expectations are introduced into the discursive field of quantum. Meanwhile, an atmosphere of competition may have had broader implications than just affecting the ability of quantum

scientists to collaborate. Pressure to be first to market and media might also conflict with calls for public dialogue and discussion on the societal aspects and impacts of emerging quantum technologies.

Undeniably, the hyped-up narrative for quantum has produced a desirable result for quantum scientists in the form of national coordination and funding in multiple countries, so ensuring the continuing momentum of the field. However, the risk remains that by using hype physicists might jeopardize stakeholders’ trust in quantum science and technology by creating unrealistic expectations. So, the importance of moderating and managing hype remains.

**Funding** The corresponding author was supported by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems while this work was conducted.

**Competing interests** The authors declare no competing interests.

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### DR. TARA ROBERSON

is an experienced communicator with a background in research management and stakeholder engagement. She is an associate investigator in responsible innovation and science communication at the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems.

<figure><img src="image_21.png" /></figure>

### PROF. SUJATHA RAMAN

has been director of Research at the Australian National Centre for Public Awareness of Science at the Australian National University since 2018. She holds the UNESCO Chair in Science Communication for the Public Good, and is Associate Editor of the *Journal of Responsible Innovation and Engaging Science, Technology and Society*.

<figure><img src="image_22.png" /></figure>

### PROF. JOAN LEACH

has held the role of Director of the Australian National Centre for Public Awareness of Science at the Australian National University since January 2016. Joan’s research and teaching focuses (among others) on theories of the public in science communication as well as language and rhetoric in science (both in public and in technical contexts).

<figure><img src="image_23.png" /></figure>

### SAMANTHA VILKINS

is a Research Associate at Queensland University of Technology’s Digital Media Research Centre, working on the project “Determining the Drivers and Dynamics of Partisanship and Polarisation in Online Public Debate”. Her visual design work has been on display at the National Museum of Australia and the National Library of Australia.
# Are social experiments being hyped (too much)?

Malte Neuwinger*,<fnref n="1" />

**Abstract** • Social experiments, also known as randomized controlled trials, are the subject of contentious discussions, giving rise to buzzwords such as ‘credibility revolution,’ ‘experimenting society,’ ‘global lab,’ or ‘empire of truth.’ While using exaggeration to illustrate opportunities and risks may well be justified, this research article analyzes to what extent the present debate is characterized by excessive hype. It finds that the transformative potential of social experiments is greatly overestimated, a judgment that applies to the reasoning of both proponents and critics.

**Werden Sozialexperimente (zu sehr) gehypt?**

**Zusammenfassung** • Sozialexperimente, auch bekannt als randomisierte kontrollierte Studien, werden kontrovers diskutiert, etwa unter den Schlagworten ,Revolution der Glaubwürdigkeit', ,Experimentiergesellschaft', ,globales Labor' oder ,Imperium der Wahrheit'. Obwohl Übertreibung zur Verdeutlichung von Chancen und Risiken durchaus gerechtfertigt sein kann, untersucht dieser Forschungsartikel inwiefern die aktuelle Diskussion durch einen übermäßigen Hype geprägt ist. Im Ergebnis wird festgestellt, dass das transformative Potenzial von Sozialexperimenten weit überschätzt wird. Diese Diagnose gilt gleichermaßen für die Argumente von Unterstützern und Kritikern.

**Keywords** • hype, social experiment, RCT, instrument constituencies, tools-to-theories heuristic

This article is part of the Special topic "Technology hype: Dealing with bold expectations and overpromising" edited by J. Bareis, M. Roßmann and F. Bordignon. https://doi.org/10.14512/tatup.32.3.10

‘It became a thing – in academia and outside organizations. And then it became controversial, which, in a sense, is even better.’

Nobel laureate Esther Duflo
about the rise of social experiments
(quoted in Parker 2010)

## The debate

There is little doubt that modern societies should use their best knowledge to improve people's lives. Yet what exactly constitutes our best knowledge and how exactly it should be used are controversial questions. Over the past twenty years, a wave of 'evidence-based policy making' has provided one answer: Public policy should be tested through social experiments. Much like in clinical trials, such experiments randomly assign people to 'treatment' and 'control' groups: In the simplest case, one receives the new program, the other does not, and if the former program leads to better effects than the latter we may conclude that our program 'works'. And much like in clinical trials, such an approach is seen as applying the organized skepticism of science to policy making: If we are uncomfortable with taking untested drugs, why would we be comfortable with subjecting ourselves to untested public policies?

This reasoning has given rise to a wave of excitement. As the titles of several recent books and articles inform us, ‘randomized controlled trials’ (RCTs), as social experiments have been labelled to fit the medical model, constitute a ‘credibility revolution’ in social scientific research (Angrist and Pischke 2010), the beginning of a ‘twenty-first century experimenting society’ (White 2019) in which ‘radical researchers are changing our world’ (Leigh 2018). Long-time commitment to the claim that RCTs will ‘revolutionize social policy’, as they revolutionized medicine (Duflo and Kremer 2005, p. 228), has earned three economists the 2019 Nobel Prize. (As explained below, the strong connection between medicine and social science seems overdrawn. Because it was the standard terminology before the current hype, I therefore speak of social experiments instead of

<figure><img src="image_24.png" /></figure>

<footnote>* Corresponding author: malte.neuwinger@uni-bielefeld.de</footnote>

<footnote n="1">¹ Faculty of Sociology, Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, DE</footnote>
RCTs (Greenberg et al. 1999).) Among other things, social ex-
periments have been used to check whether microcredits can
help people rise out of poverty, whether disbursing money for
relocation improves people's health and income, and whether a
universal basic income has positive economic and psychological
effects. While most prominent in Anglophone countries, social
experiments are increasingly spreading around the world. Even
countries lagging behind the trend, like Germany, have now be-
gun to express interest (Faust 2020).

For some time now, the amount of attention social experi-
ments receive has raised suspicions of hype. Critics have wor-
ried that many claims about experiments' superiority are epis-
temically unjustified, politically tendentious, and ethically ques-
tionable, because they involve unwarranted generalizations
beyond the particular experimental context, promote small prob-
lem fixes at the expense of larger socio-economic effects, and
are cavalier about people's rights (Kvangraven 2019; Picciotto
2012; Ravallion 2009). Pushing these critiques further, some
speak of the emergence of a new 'empire of truth' that crowds
out democratic deliberation through technocratic governance
(Kelly and McGoey 2018) or an elitist 'global lab' that reduces
people to the equivalent of test animals (Fejerskov 2022). Ac-
cording to critics, by combining scientific credibility, a strong
media profile, and the support of philanthropic foundations sup-
porters have turned social experimentation into a profitable 'sci-
entific business model' (Bédécarrats et al. 2019, p. 750).

What should one make of this debate, whose strong rhetoric and self-perceived societal relevance is likely to baffle the un-initiated? I argue that proponents and critics have usefully raised awareness about the potentials and risks of social experiments, but by now the most radical factions of the debate are in danger of losing touch with reality. Drawing on open-ended interviews with twenty influential advocates, implementers, and funders, the main section of this article shows that practitioners are much more pragmatic about social experiments than academic discus-sions would make one believe. These interviews were conducted in 2022 and 2023, mostly via video call, targeting key social ex-periment supporters such as the International Initiative for Im-pact Evaluation (3ie) and the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Ac-tion Lab (J-PAL). In addition, conceptualizing the phenomenon of ‘hype’, the remainder of the article argues that social experi-ments should be seen as a tool that actively shapes the thinking of those involved in the debate. In particular, this tool promotes the misleading assumption that social experiments can easily be compared with drug trials and narrows down attention to a pol-icy’s ‘impact’ in the sense of causality.

Hype and criti-hype

Debates about new scientific and technological developments of-
ten make it hard to tell which side is right. One reason for this is
that both the relevant facts and the relevant criteria of ‘right’ and
‘wrong’ are part of the discussion. Another is that situations in

which things are still unfolding make it harder to identify vested
interests and analytical blind spots. To mitigate this problem,
technology assessment (TA) and especially science and tech-
nology studies (STS) recommend the principles of ‘symmetry’
and ‘reflexivity’. Symmetry prompts researchers to ‘maintain a
posture of balanced skepticism’ toward both sides of the debate.
And reflexivity, as Stephen Hilgartner, Sheila Jasanoff and Hilton
Simmet note in a ‘living document’ that circulates within the STS
community, appeals to researchers’ capability to ‘become aware
of the assumptions underlying their knowledge claims and, where
necessary, to address specific blind spots and sources of bias or
error’. Because things in the making involve what STS scholars
call ‘interpretive flexibility’, one should rather be careful with
strong epistemic or normative judgments.

My brief survey of the social experiment debate suggests that it is pretty much the opposite of symmetric or reflexive. Rather, ‘credibility revolutions’, ‘experimenting societies’, ‘global labs’, and ‘empires of truth’ are examples of hype in the technical sense of the term. While all science needs to go slightly beyond existing evidence to make useful inferences, ‘inappropriate exaggeration’ willingly sacrifices reasonable prediction in favor of generating excitement and enthusiasm. Indeed, though ‘enthusiasm’ may seem like an odd description of worries about technocracy and unethical human experimentation, the concept of hype applies equally to optimistic and pessimistic exaggeration. After all, both have the effect of impeding a clear assessment of the issue at hand (Intemann 2022, pp. 180–182). If not in ‘content’, radical critiques of social experiments therefore seem closely connected to their intellectual counterparts in ‘form’: While the normative evaluation flips from celebratory to alarmist, both sides agree that the implications for policy making will be radical.

Social experiments are not alone in being hyped both ways. Indeed, fighting positive overclaiming through negative over-claiming seems to be part of a general phenomenon, one that has been termed ‘criti-hype’ (Vinsel 2021). Many scholars have worried that widely hailed technologies like genetic engineering, nanotechnology, or social media will bring about a social dys-topia. While such worries are quite reasonable in principle, the problem with criti-hypes is that they seem less interested in get-ting a handle on the problems identified than in imagining grim ‘technoscientific futures’ (Vinsel 2021). Ironically, then, the asymmetrical, unreflexive social experiment debate may feed not one but two ‘scientific business models’: one that acquires money and publicity through experimentation, and the other that does the same by criticizing that experimentation – and both do this though it is quite unclear whether social experiments will have the predicted effects one way or another.

Will social experiments transform
policy making?

Obviously, not all discussion of social experiments constitutes
hype. But what does? As Intemann (2022) stresses, particularly
STS scholars have been rather vague about the criteria by which they identify hype. As indicated, her solution is to focus on claims that are both exaggerated and inappropriate. In other words, identifying hype involves *empirical assessments* as well as reasoned and explicit *value judgments*. What does this imply for the social experiment debate?

Let's begin with value judgments. In-temann suggests that relevant judgments may be divided into two parts, namely (1) the most important goals of commu-nicate the potentials and risks of social experiments as tools of political decision making. If one gives at least some credence and weight to the worries of both sides of the debate – as I think one should – the risk of getting things wrong suggests a ten-sion. Overstating the benefits and understating the risks might lead to increased global injustices caused by social experimen-tation, while the converse error might perpetuate badly informed and at worst harmful government policies at the expense of bet-ter ones.

Based on these value judgments (which may be disputed, but to me seem quite modest), one might already conclude that many commentators have indeed exaggerated inappropriately. Clearly, they have not even tried to give a balanced account of benefits and risks. On the other hand, one might argue that some exag-gerations may nevertheless be useful because they clarify that di-verging value judgments are premised on very different norma-tive concerns: harm through experimentation vs. harm through business as usual (Parkhurst 2017, pp. 7–8). Here the second part of identifying inappropriate exaggeration comes in: empir-ical assessments. As I will show, both sides of the social exper-iment debate often exaggerate inappropriately because they in-vite unwarranted inferences about social experiments *given the evidence we have available* – namely that they predict trans-formative change on the basis of very limited facts. This be-comes clear when considering that most practitioners appear to have adopted a ‘new middle ground’ between the ‘well-re-hearsed and polarized positions’ of hypers and criti-hypers (Gis-selquist and Niño-Zarazúa 2015, p. 2).

One claim that pervades recent discussions is that evidence from social experiments is the ‘gold standard’ of evidence while anything else supposedly ‘has no legitimacy and basis in reality’ (Fejerskov 2022, p. 172; Gerber et al. 2014). Surprisingly, among people whose job consists in implementing and funding social experiments, very few seem to share this view. Instead, one em-ployee of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), a major social experiment advocate, describes them as ‘a tool in

the toolbox rather than the answer to all questions' (interview J-PAL 3). Another predicts that social experiments 'will become less [...] glorified. And they will become just a tool in the arsenal of governments' (interview J-PAL 2). An analyst at Arnold Ventures, a major philanthropic funder, worries about a 'point, and maybe we're here now, where there's just a lot of frustration with how often unsatisfying the answers to these questions are', sometimes because experiments produce no measurable effects, sometimes because interventions are badly implemented – and often because trying to tell these options apart is like 'banging your head against the wall' (interview Arnold Ventures).<fnref n="1" /> Senior officials at the Behavioral Economics Team of the Australian Government similarly oscillate between confidence in the benefits of experiments and disillusionment (Ball and Head 2021, pp. 113–115). And so do researchers at the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) in the UK, stressing that 'RCTs are not the answer to everything – you need to combine them with all kinds of other approaches' (interview BIT).

An accurate assessment of social experiments' transforma-tive potential also needs a good grasp of how large the 'business' actually is and how much potential it has for growth. This is surprisingly difficult. For international development, one of the largest and best-documented fields, a few hundred social exper-iments are conducted every year, with a clear upward trend over time – compare Figure 1 to the current annual number of med-ical trials, which is around 60,000 (WHO 2023). In Northern countries, experiments in education are certainly on the rise, while other fields are smaller and precise numbers are harder to come by. (Much depends on the exact definition of a 'social ex-periment': How many people should it involve? How much does the 'treatment' need to differ from the status quo?) But even given clearer definitions and better data, the question is: Would, say, several thousand social experiments a year be enough to transform policy making?

<figure><img src="image_25.png" /><figcaption>Fig. 1: Annual number of social experiments in international development, conducted between 2000–2020.</figcaption></figure>

Source: 3ie (2023)

<footnote n="1">1 In the natural sciences, a similar problem is known as the 'experimenter's regress': Well-conducted experiments discover new facts, but these 'facts' only are facts if we know that the experiment was 'well-conducted', which we only 'know' because of the new 'facts' (Godin and Gingras 2002).</footnote>
Part of the answer depends on whether governments are in-
terested enough in the results to use them in their daily deci-
sion making. This issue has given practitioners some headaches –
even strong evidence loses out to political strategy – but there
are certainly ongoing efforts to establish collaborations with
governments (Taddese 2021). Another part of the answer de-
pends on whether the current business model is as profitable
and sustainable as hypers and criti-hypers seem to believe. For
international development, the assumption is that social exper-
imentation will keep flourishing because ‘demand is twin-en-
gined, driven by both the donor community and the academic
world’ while ‘supply is largely shaped by a brand of scientific
businesses and entrepreneurs’ (Bédécarrats et al. 2019, p. 750).

tend to be people-centered: ‘Hype cycle’ models suggest that people pass through different stages of excitement and frustration before an innovation finally brings productive development (Dedehayir and Steinert 2016). The reverse model is tool-centered: Rather than a passive thing people are more or less excited about, innovations can develop ‘a life of their own’ in the sense that (1) new tools prompt people to popularize them because their users come to materially depend on them, and (2) acquaintance with new tools shapes people’s thinking. While not explicitly framed as a theory of hype, the active role of innovative tools has been proposed as an important factor for developments in both science and politics. The ‘tools-to-theories heuristic’ suggests that the rising familiarity with statistical concepts

Isn't talk of 'impacts', 'outcomes', and 'results' simply a symptom
of rampant managerialism in public policy?

As far as I can tell, however, this analysis overlooks a host of misaligned incentives among the actors being involved.

One primary misalignment is that most academics are in-
terested in policy evaluation only if they can publish their re-
sults in academic journals. Almost all practitioners interviewed
report a fundamental tension between academically interesting
and practically relevant experimental work. The compromise is
often to test small ‘nudges’ that are easy to implement and quick
to evaluate (White 2014, pp. 21–22). Unfortunately, academi-
cally clever but tiny interventions are rarely useful for govern-
ment policy – with the possible exception of behavioral science
applications in governance, where the incentives of academics
and public partners roughly converge on light touch interven-
tions (Fels 2022). As one researcher at the German Institute
for Development Evaluation (DEval) remarks, ‘even in the Eng-
lish-speaking world, it’s individual cases where it has really been
win-win for both sides, where there’s been an academic publica-
tion and it also helped on the practical side’ (interview DEval).
Practitioners also worry that funding may die down because ex-
periments are too expensive, or that governments may lose in-
terest because results take too long to become available. Over-
all, while social experiments are a significant phenomenon with
benefits and risks, their transformative potential seems limited
given the available evidence and the incentives of relevant actors.

Thinking through tools:
how social experiments shape hypers'
and criti-hypers' reasoning

Having discussed whether social experiments will have a trans-
formative effect on policy making (probably not), it is interest-
ing to turn around and ask whether experiments may have an ef-
fect on hypers and criti-hypers themselves. Descriptions of hype

influenced theories of psychology (Gigerenzer 1991), while the
concept of ‘instrument constituencies’ suggests that acquaint-
ance with the notion of citizen panels affected prevailing think-
ing about political representation (Simons and Voß 2018). So-
cial experiments seem to influence the thinking of both hypers
and criti-hypers in a similar way, leading them to equate social
experiments with drug trials and think of ‘impact’ in the nar-
row sense of causality.

While they fundamentally disagree about the implications,
hypers and criti-hypers are united in comparing social exper-
iments to clinical trials. To one side, the success of evidence-
based medicine renders social experiments the obvious solution
to social problems (Leigh 2018, chapter 2). To the other side, the
fact that drug trials are increasingly outsourced to the Global
South serves as an effective warning against the social inequal-
ities scientific and technological innovations can produce (Fe-
jerskov 2022, chapter 5). Such dissensus in consensus resem-
bles the nineteenth century practice of ‘bundling’ loosely asso-
ciated issues into large-scale, urgent, and contentious questions
(the Eastern Question, the Jewish Question, etc.): Both sides
of the debate merge social and medical experiments into a sin-
gle Experimental Question, seeking to ‘raise the profile of their
questions in order to draw attention to preferred solutions’ (Case
2018, p. 4). By thinking ‘through’ the tool, all experiments be-
come the same – and depending on one’s inclinations more of
them signify either a move toward ‘science’ or ‘technocracy’.
Perhaps subconsciously, bundling medical and social experi-
ments wins everyone involved argumentative mileage.

The odd feature of this apparent agreement is not only that
hypers and criti-hypers rarely investigate the comparability of
social and medical experiments explicitly, but that neither side
seems to notice that a huge part of high-tech, high-stakes medi-
cine is rarely subject to experimental evaluation, including sur-
gery (Bothwell and Jones 2021). And this is despite the fact that
surgery is in many ways the better comparison. For instance, in both social and surgical interventions placebos and double blinding are much harder to implement than for drugs (for practical and ethical reasons) and their success crucially depends on the skills and motivations of those who implement them (respectively, surgical teams and public administrators).

The second way in which the tool of social experiments influences the thinking of hypers and criti-hypers alike is that it focuses their attention on the notion of ‘impact’ (Breslau 1997). Indeed, social experiments zoom in on a very particular interpretation of impact in the sense of the *precise estimation of causal effects, everything else being equal*. The logic of experiments – the point of which is to create a counterfactual ‘ceteris paribus world’ through randomization – provides the discussion with a definition of what impact *is*. Hypers and criti-hypers naturally disagree whether social experiments are the adequate tool to assess impact-as-causality (Bédécarrats et al. 2019; Gerber et al. 2014), but they rarely recognize that their understanding is in direct competition with the very different conception of impact as the *overall effect a policy has, considering the complexity of the real world*. The latter has long been the official definition of the OECD Development Assistance Committee (2021), which has never settled on experimental methods (Faust 2020, pp. 74–75). Evidently, thinking ‘through’ the tool of social experiments discourages advocates and critics from engaging other concepts of impact.

It is possible to disregard such confusions as another oddity. Isn't talk of 'impacts', 'outcomes', and 'results' simply a symptom of rampant managerialism in public policy? Yes, but not 'simply'. After all, regardless of preferred vernacular it is difficult to deny that both the question (1) whether an observed improvement can be causally attributed to a newly implemented policy and (2) whether that policy really creates improvements in the grand scheme of things are highly important. Clear thinking about both (and their interconnection) is central to any policy debate and disregarding them as 'neoliberal' is just as unhelpful as trading off one against the other. In sum, while the social experiment debate has clarified the potential risks and benefits of social experimentation itself, narrow tool-based thinking seems to prevent greater clarity about what it means to 'have a positive impact' on people's lives.

## Conclusion

Hypes put an interesting twist on the truism that ‘extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence’. As extraordinary claims about the transformative potential of social experiments become the norm, the more cautious view that such claims are inappropriate exaggerations is put in the position to provide extraordinary evidence. Thus, people who have built a reputation around praising or criticizing social experiments will predictably not be convinced of my argument. And they should not be, because the evidence I have presented is indeed partial. It is possible that I

have misjudged the facts, that my interviewees have deceived me, or that my analysis is faulty in some other way. Still, I hope my argument can shift the burden of proof at least a little.

Critics might also ask whether less hype would actually lead to better decisions. Isn't my argument based on a 'technocratic fallacy' (as one reviewer of this article opines): that 'facts [...] are only an input [to policy making, my addition] that can (and should!) be ignored in the name of ideology'? It is certainly true that democratic politics cannot do without value judgments (just like the identification of hype) and that the selection of relevant facts requires deliberation. The process is complicated. Still, I agree with Parkhurst (2017) that good policy requires both values *and* facts. Just like insisting on the importance of impact is not *per se* neoliberal, insisting on the importance of facts is not *per se* technocratic.

Funding • This work received no external funding.

Competing interests • The author declares no competing interests.

## Research data

Interviewees consented that the information they provided can be used in publications, but without transcripts being open to the public. The Special topic editors have had access to the transcripts quoted in the article.

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WHO – World Health Organization (2023): Global observatory on health research and development. Number of clinical trials by year, location, disease, phase, age and sex of trial participants (1999–2022). Available online at https://www.who.int/observatories/global-observatory-on-health-research-and-development/monitoring/number-of-trial-registrations-by-year-location-disease-and-phase-of-development, last accessed on 10.10.2023.

<figure><img src="image_26.png" /></figure>

## MALTE NEUWINGER

is a PhD student with the Research Training Group ‘World Politics: The emergence of political arenas and modes of observation in world society’ at Bielefeld University. Because he is currently writing a thesis on the rise of social experiments, Malte hopes the hype will continue for some time into the future.
# Tech hype as a mnemonic process: Misremembering the land problem in India

Cheshta Arora*,<fnref n="1" /> Debarun Sarkar<fnref n="2" />

**Abstract** • This research article considers tech hype as a mnemonic process that makes us remember or forget the world, technology, and the myriad ways we can relate to it. The argument is based on an auto-ethnographic vignette and a close reading of two key texts in the discourse on using technology for land management in India. The article shows how technology, the social, and the practice of knowledge-production can be rethought in this mock battle between hype and criticism of hype.

**Tech-Hype als Erinnerungsprozess: Falsche Erinnerung an das Landproblem in Indien**

**Zusammenfassung** • Der Forschungsartikel betrachtet den Tech-Hype als Prozess, der uns an die Welt, die Technologie und die unzähligen Möglichkeiten, wie wir damit umgehen können, erinnert oder sie uns vergessen lässt. Die Argumentation basiert auf einer autoethnografischen Vignette und einer genauen Lektüre zweier Schlüsseltexte im Diskurs über den Einsatz von Technologie für die Landbewirtschaftung in Indien. Der Beitrag zeigt auf, wie Technologie, das Soziale und die Praxis der Wissensproduktion in diesem Scheingefecht zwischen Hype und Kritik am Hype neu gedacht werden können.

**Keywords** • tech hype, mnemonic, blockchain, land rights, India

This article is part of the Special topic "Technology hype: Dealing with bold expectations and overpromising" edited by J. Bareis, M. Roßmann and F. Bordignon. https://doi.org/10.14512/tatup.32.3.10

## Introduction

The research article moves into the foreground what ‘hype’ and ‘criti-hype’ do in the context of emerging technologies, and how they serve as a mnemonic process which has influence on how a problem is remembered. The paper contends that both ‘hype’ and ‘criti-hype’ are produced within a certain discursive milieu of ‘tech-solutionism’ as well as the ‘counter-(tech) solutionism’. The paper contends that the faux combat between hype and criti-hype not only sidesteps ordinary problems of technology (Vinsel 2021) but also takes attention away from ordinary problems and diverse political imaginaries that have been long in the making.

The paper enacts a critique through a juxtaposition (Pál 2013) of two reports – Blockchain for Property: A roll out road map for India (BFP) (Chandra and Rangaraju 2017) and Recasting land tenure rights in the data epoch (Gurumurthy et al. 2022) (RLT) published by two leading, independent, nonprofit, policy institutes in India – India Institute and IT for Change, respectively. While BFP advocates the use of blockchain and big data for managing property rights in India, RLT critiques such initiatives. The two reports reflect the overall positions of their respective organizations. India Institute defines itself as an evidence-based, free-market policy institute. On the contrary, IT for Change distinguishes itself from both techno-utopic as well as market-fundamentalist approaches to technology.

It should be noted at the outset that these two texts are not unique but symptomatic of the larger discourse on emerging technologies. A critical discussion of these two texts is complemented by the first author's autoethnographic account of working at a privately funded tech policy organization in India from 2021–2022.

The rest of the article is divided into three sections. The section that follows defines hype and foregrounds its mnemonic characteristics. The third section presents the two texts to note how hype and criti-hype are entangled to produce the mnemonic effect. The fourth and concluding section presents an autoethnographic account to situate the ways in which the technology, the social and the knowledge-making practice are reworked in this faux combat between hype and criti-hype.

<figure><img src="image_27.png" /></figure>

<footnote>*Corresponding author: car@vestforsk.no</footnote>

<footnote n="1">¹ Western Norway Research Institute, Sogndal, NO</footnote>

<footnote n="2">² Independent researcher</footnote>
## Situating hype

> „It's good you are working on these other aspects of blockchain. I am tired of these crypto people and the hype that they have generated.“
> 
> (Quote from the project manager where the first author worked on a project to map the implications of recording land rights on the blockchain in India)

It is commonly agreed upon that Bitcoin emerged in the moment of a 'catastrophic failure' (Bijker and Law 1994, p. 2) – the 2008 financial crisis – as one of the several alternatives to the production, circulation and use of money (Kostakis and Giotitsas 2014).

ber and forget the world, the technology, and the myriad ways in which we can relate to it. To pay attention to hype as a mnemonic process requires paying keen attention to the way the technology and its place in the world is narrated and “the constitutive role of memory in this process of self-image making or identity formation” (Assmann 2006, p. 67).

Hype as a discursive process and hype a mnemonic process are closely related. While redescribing hype as a discursive device allows us to encapsulate its knowledge claims within the discursive limits, redescribing hype as a mnemonic process foreground the narrative structure and its affective reworking of the collective memory across different scales. As a mnemonic process, it co-produces scales from the individual to the various col-

> Hype makes us remember and forget the world, the technology, and the myriad ways in which we can relate to it.

The future of bitcoin, and with it of decentralized crypto coins remains uncertain given the state's monopoly on the production and circulation of money. However, blockchain, the technology underpinning bitcoin, is a strong contender in the redesigning of governance processes (Jun 2018).

The first epigraph is uttered within this milieu – indicating the promise of erasing the catastrophic failure while stabilizing the technology as a non-financial, distributed ledger that can keep tamper-resistant and transparent records. The fascination with cryptocurrencies is identified by the speaker of the first epigraph as *mere* hype and paying scholarly attention to its non-financial use cases is presumed to be more mature and reasonable.

To note the discursive limits inherent in the first epigraph, we can diffract it through Fisher's (2009) description of capitalist realism. That is, to the often-quoted statement that Fisher appropriates, "It is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism" (2009, p. 7), one can also add state's monopoly over monetary value to the list. Considering this, according to the first epigraph, studying the non-financial use cases of blockchain is strategic, more practical, mature and grounded because it is *presumably* immature to question the state's monopoly over value.

## Hype as a mnemonic process

Scholarly attention to memory has focussed on two things: its relationship to the history of subjectivity and to the technologies of representation (Radstone and Hodgkin 2003). The first deals with the question: what we remember (which makes 'us') while the latter is invested in asking how we remember (the way we are).

To consider hype as a mnemonic process is to foreground how hype constitutes not only the technology or its use but also the socio-political that it intervenes in. Hype makes us remem-

lective and trans-scalar processes. Memory after all is a multi and trans-scalar process which re/descales the social (Erll 2011). Hype and criti-hype – that is, critics who “retain the picture of extraordinary change but focus instead on negative problems and risks” (Vinsel 2021) – can then be situated on the same spectrum of affective reworking of memory – of what *ought* to be remembered and forgotten, and how. This characteristic of hype as a mnemonic process complements recent approaches to hype as a rhetorical device that is not “an inaccurate forecast but rather an expectant kind of language, rhetoric, or discourse” (Smith 2020, p. 502). This allows one to ask not only how hype is produced but also what it is made to do.

## Land on blockchain: What is being envisioned?

A growing discourse around land and property rights has argued for a formalisation of land records through digitisation to reduce poverty (Sjaastad and Cousins 2009). It is purported to “facilitate the functioning of land markets in developing countries as well as diminish the threat of losing land rights for vulnerable communities” (Daniel and Ifejika Speranza 2020).

This discourse assumes that formalization of land rights and entitlements can lead to better economic growth and development. It argues that people do not lack assets but lack formal recognition of their assets which affects their access to their rights. This claim has been noted to be lacking and a growing body of literature sheds light on its deficiencies (Benjaminsen et al. 2009; Bromley 2009; Meinzen-Dick and Mwangi 2009; Toulmin 2009).

It is amidst this backdrop that formalisation and digitalisation of land and property records have started shifting towards discussions and experiments of land records management on the
blockchain across various states (Daniel and Ifejika Speranza 2020; Konashevych 2020; Shang and Price 2019; Thamrin et al. 2021; Yapicioglu and Leshinsky 2020).

In India, despite policy-hesitancy concerning cryptocurrency, experiments in blockchain are already underway (MF 2019; MEITG India 2021, MEITG India n.d.; NITI Aayog 2020). These efforts have triggered the interests of both the private and the state actors.

To foreground the misremembering being enacted by the two reports, it would be worthwhile to give a quick note on India's land regime. India's land rights regime and tenure forms are remarkably heterogenous, reflecting the country's diverse cultural, historical, and socio-economic contexts which is "nor-

approaches towards big data processing, increased community involvement and improved land digitization. Blockchain is presented as both a "a new trust regime" which would bring "trust, transparency and efficiency in property transactions" (Chandra and Rangaraju 2017, p. 25) and a "disruptive technology, taking the world by storm in a plethora of areas where there was a centralized entity hitherto" (Chandra and Rangaraju 2017, p. 22).

BFP envisions a decentralized governance mechanism that can revamp property governance. It promises to remove corruption by reducing the human point of contact and avoid fraudulent overlapping transfers towards tamper-proof, immutable land records that can directly benefit the state. BFP promises to improve the "security and checks in transactions involving high-

> This discourse assumes that formalization of land rights and entitlements can lead to better economic growth and development.

mally viewed as a planning and administrative nightmare” (Benjamin 2004, p. 177). The tenure form can rest on several sources such as historical, indigenous conventions, particular sections from the Revenue Act, specific title granting announcements on national days, housing schemes, titles issued by village bodies, city corporation and state level organizations and titles handed down by local royalty (Benjamin 2004, p. 180).

This loose regulatory environment that is premised upon mixed land use is considered to be “the single most important factor that facilitates poor groups access to productive land” (Benjamin, 2004, p. 179). However, the loose regulatory regime is not perceived as conducive for market-led development. In 2008, India’s policy on land reforms shifted the “presumptive nature of land records and ownership to that of guaranteed title to land or conclusive land title regime” (Nayak 2021, p. xiv) wherein ownership is guaranteed by the state as opposed to presumptive titling where ownership is assumed unless refuted. This shift is pursued by ‘cloaking change in the guise of continuity’ by finding innovative ways“ via complementary technological and regulatory frameworks (Nayak 2021, p. 11). This policy shift from presumptive to conclusive titling, adopting an apolitical route, becomes a fertile ground for technological solutions such as digitization, GIS mapping and blockchain to flourish.

## Situating the two reports: misremembering the land problem

### From land rights to blockchain for property rights

BFP was published in 2017 by the India Institute with contributions from authors affiliated with both academia and industry such as the National Law School of India University, Carnegie India, ChromWay Sweden etc. It identified the need for transformations in the legal regime vis-à-vis land ownership, ethical

value assets such as real estate and property” (Chandra and Rangaraju 2017, p. 6), “centralization of land and property records within the state machinery (which are often in the form of physical ledgers and maps)” (Chandra and Rangaraju 2017, p. 6), improve decision-making, land market price and financialization, and access to clear titles in the case of reparation. Representing state, academic and business interests, it weaves a strong link between introducing blockchain for land management and conclusive titles for ownership.

BFP doesn’t invest in *merely* overselling the advantages of blockchain. It is divided into five chapters, a foreword and two case studies. Through this structure, it traverses the risk of tech hype in two ways. First, by downplaying blockchain’s challenge to fiat money while upholding its use case for “trade finance and property governance” (Chandra and Rangaraju 2017, p. 25). Second, by foregrounding it as a socio-technical system that will require an entire ecosystem, policy reforms and involvement of host of actors for its success. Its use depends on a robust titling law for conclusive titles, rigorous digitization of existing land records, and an active involvement of local actors such as activists and civil society-based organizations that can translate the vision on-ground. At the same time, the five chapters together work towards redescribing the land problem where access to property is directly linked to improving access to financialization (a claim commonly disputed in the literature) while land disputes are reframed as a symptom of corruption. This misremembering or redescription of the land problem essentially works towards legitimizing the use of blockchain for property rights.

### From land rights to data rights: Whither land problem?

One can grasp the faux combat between hype and criti-hype by juxtaposing BFP with RLT. RLT was published in 2022 by IT for Change as a critique of India's Digital India Land
Records Modernisation Programme (DILRMP), the national programme to digitize and modernize land records. The report was a case study conducted in collaboration with FIAN (For the Right to Food & Nutrition) International, a Germany-based human rights organization. RLT notes that DILRMP “continues on the slippery slope of de-recognition of traditional claims of marginal farmers in common property resources noted in the early phases. Most notably, the customary tenure rights of marginal farmers, tribal groups, and indigenous peoples do not find a place in the Program” (Gurumurthy et al. 2022, p. 5).

To present the critique of the programme, RLT poses a series of mnemonic questions: “Digitalization for whom? Towards what? And in whose interests?” (Gurumurthy et al. 2022, p. 12). These questions remain rhetorical in their plea to the policy makers to remember the claims of the marginalized in order to “reclaim the transformative potential of the digital paradigm for tenure rights and farmer empowerment” (Gurumurthy et al. 2022, p. 4). These questions clear the space to demand a “new policy vision for digitalization in agriculture [...] in consultation with farmer constituencies [...] rather than those of the capitalist market” (Gurumurthy et al. 2022, p. 14).

While we understand the need for a critical appraisal of proposed digitalization policies to make them more robust, we are interested in interrogating the narrative structure via which the critical appraisal is enacted. The “critical judgement” enacted by RLT operates in the mode of “fault-finding” (Williams 2014, p. 84) that relies on exposing a prevailing constellation of power of marginalized farmers and extractive capitalism which has to be tamed through a robust social welfare state. The prevailing logic of “techno-political authority of database welfare regimes” (Gurumurthy et al. 2022, p. 2) is not interrupted or destabilised via this critical judgement. Instead, it enacts a kind of an “inverted contrary affirmation” (Foucault 1996) of the digitalization programme provided that the recommendations made by RLT are taken into account. Against criti-hype we understand critique as that which underscores the contradictions of the discourse, and “brings into relief the very framework of evaluation itself” (Butler 2001). Thus, one can identify in RLT a “bid to change or revitalize politics by bringing the citizen closer to the state or the state closer to the citizen [which] offer the simplest alternative to politics: the simple police” (Rancière 1999, p. 31) i.e., risk-management, regulation and governance.

By enacting a critical appraisal of the DILRMP, RLT forecloses a potential critical relation that can “order the entire field of moral and political judgement” (Butler 2001). Instead, it relies on available configurations where the harms ensuing from data, datafication and use of technology can be mitigated through civil society consultations and a promise of a functional social welfare state, an elusive postcolonial dream (Arora 2020) that can domesticate the market while offering, presumably, a democratic alternative to the technocracy of big tech. It remains unclear how this conclusion is any different from the ‘efficiency discourse’ of tech-solutionism that is critiqued at the beginning

of RLT. The way forward presented by RLT fails to present any challenge to the BFP’s ‘roll-out plan’ that already anticipates RLT’s critique and advocates the use of blockchain by weaving a complex web of datafication, blockchain, local actors and CBOs.

RLT’s critical appraisal can be described as enacting a governance ecosystem which *merely* envisions a greater role for civil rights-based organizations (CBOs), where CBOs appear as social experts (albeit unelected) speaking on behalf of the most vulnerable. Here, the socio-political problem, the question of democracy and the political is redescribed and misremembered merely as facilitation of politics by the experts. From another perspective, this position can be considered guilty of foreclosing the political.

# Epilogue

## How not to engage in hype or criti-hype: an autoethnographic account of a failed project

A proposal to study land management on blockchain was submitted by the two authors of this paper to the Nudge Foundation, a non-profit organization based in India that funds solutions to social issues via global philanthropic investment firms and foundations. The proposal was rejected by the jury. At the same time, the first author of this paper was working as a researcher at another tech-policy institute in India. The previously rejected proposal was submitted to the institute by the first author for internal funding and was accepted in July 2022.

The project was not assigned any fixed budget and I [first author] was merely expected to do a critique of existing policy briefs bringing in critical perspectives on the technology and its proposed use for land management. The fieldwork-based method that was proposed in the initial proposal was ignored as ‘there was no budget for it’.

I worked on the project for three months and conducted a critical discourse analysis of the white papers which were advocating the use of blockchain for property management. I was asked to write a paper which was to be presented at the donor’s property consortium meetings in January 2023 and was informed by the manager that “[the donor] is very excited to know the results and they are looking forward to the paper” (personal communication with the first author).

Due to both personal and professional reasons, however, I resigned in December 2022 without submitting the final report on the project. While other factors had facilitated the decision to resign, I would say, in hindsight, that the inhibition to share the report with the team and the donor emerged from the realisation that the discourse analysis had not revealed anything original and that the paper, if at all, would be merely repeating ‘critical perspectives’ that, as mentioned previously in the case of RLT, are meant to operate as ‘inverted contrary affirmation’ (Foucault 1996) of the programmes and technologies being critiqued.
The auto-ethnographic account above, when refracted through Lee Vinsel’s (2021) argument does not only foreground how “innovation speak distracts us from ordinary problems of technology and infrastructure, including maintenance, repair, and mundane labour.” The account also distracts scientists from studying ordinary problems, using ordinary tools, and from using research methods that may not always result in operationalizable results or might reconfigure a research problem into a problem that is not in need of the next big tech or a more robust political intervention.

For instance, Benjamin's extended fieldwork-based study of a settlement in South Bangalore presented a “nuanced dynamics of contestations around land” (Benjamin and Raman 2011, p. 26) that allowed him to glimpse local government as a ‘porous bureaucracy’ (Benjamin 2004), a dynamic which is washed out in straightforward debates over corruption that is “actively promoted by organizations like the World Bank, to limit the influence of local agents” (Benjamin and Raman 2011, p. 26). RLT uses Benjamin (Benjamin et al. 2007) as a citational resource to critique the efficiency paradigm of “techno-development” (Gurumurthy et al. 2022, p. 3). However, RLT’s policy recommendations merely complement the efficiency paradigm of BFP as they envision a “a farmer-centric vision of data infrastructure” (Gurumurthy et al. 2022, p. 12). The overall logic of the policy brief forecloses the ordinariness of porous bureaucracy, the ‘greyness that surrounds’ (Benjamin et al. 2007) claims, local conflicts and contested social relations in favour of an operationalizable tech policy recommendations.

Vinsel (2021) continues to work with a notion of hype as unrealistic claims which are further boosted by the “academic humanities and social science researchers who played along with hype to score cash money and prestige”. While we distance ourselves from this meaning of hype that relies on the false dichotomy between projected vs realistic promise, we find the concept useful to note certain trends. A critical reading of BFP and RLT, and the methodological limits narrated via the auto-ethnographic account allowed us to locate both hype and criti-hype on the same spectrum of tech-solutionism. We showed how, as a ‘mnemonic process’, hype and criti-hype and the faux combat between them rework myriad ordinary social and political problems into tech and regulatory problems. They not only reify the technology but also the socio-political surrounding it while silencing the most affected. Both impinge upon our understanding of the world and how we remember it foreclosing the myriad ways in which we can relate to it. Contrary to this faux combat, it is worthwhile to remember, à la Rancière (1999), policy as policing and to not forget the value of critical work as fantastical, ordinary, unrealistic, immature and without operationalizable implications.

**Funding** • The first author received partial financial support from the Western Norway Research Institute, Sogndal, Norway. The second author received no financial funding for his contributions to this paper.

**Competing interests** • The authors declare no competing interests.

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## CHESHTA ARORA, PHD

is a Senior Researcher at Western Norway Research Institute studying socio-technical systems in the contemporary.

## DEBARUN SARKAR

is an independent researcher based in India. His work traverses the fields of anthropology, geography, sociology and has been concerned with interrogating contemporary socio-technical systems and material-semiotic configurations.
# Handling the hype: Implications of AI hype for public interest tech projects

Theresa Züger*,<fnref n="1" /> ID, Freia Kuper<fnref n="1" /> ID, Judith Fassbender<fnref n="1" /> ID, Anna Katzy-Reinshagen<fnref n="2" /> ID, Irina Kühnlein<fnref n="1" />

**Abstract** • Based on theories of expectations of technology and empirical data from expert interviews and case studies, this research article explores how actors in the field of public interest technologies relate to and within the dynamics of AI hype. On an affirmative note, practitioners and experts see the potential that AI hype can serve their own purposes, e.g., through improved funding and support structures. At the same time, public interest tech actors distance themselves from the dynamics of AI hype and criticize it explicitly. Finally, the article discusses how engagement with AI hype and its impact affects society as a whole and, more specifically, society's ability to develop and use technologies in response to societal problems.

**Umgang mit dem Hype:** Auswirkungen des KI-Hypes
auf gemeinwohlorientierte KI-Projekte

**Zusammenfassung** • Auf der Grundlage von Theorien über Erwartungen an Technologien und anhand empirischer Daten aus Expert*innen-interviews und Fallstudien untersucht dieser Forschungsartikel, wie sich Akteur*innen im Bereich der Public-Interest-Technologien im und zum KI-Hype verhalten. Praktiker*innen und Expert*innen sehen einerseits, dass der KI-Hype ihren eigenen Interessen dienen kann, z. B. durch verbesserte Finanzierungs- und Förderstrukturen. Gleichzeitig distanzieren sich Public-Interest-Tech-Akteur*innen von der Dynamik des KI-Hypes und kritisieren ihn ausdrücklich. Abschließend wird im Artikel diskutiert, wie sich die Auseinandersetzung mit dem KI-Hype und dessen Wirkung auf die Gesellschaft insgesamt auswirkt und speziell auf die Fähigkeit der Gesellschaft, Technologien zur Lösung gesellschaftlicher Probleme zu entwickeln und einzusetzen.

**Keywords** • public interest tech, AI, hype, sociotechnical change

This article is part of the Special topic "Technology hype: Dealing with bold expectations and overpromising" edited by J. Bareis, M. Roßmann and F. Bordignon. https://doi.org/10.14512/tatup.32.3.10

## Introduction

The strong presence of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies is driven by substantial advancements in the performance of machine and deep learning, currently the main technique behind what is called artificial intelligence (Toosi et al. 2021), as well as by the public availability of more tools based on these techniques. However, the discussion of AI is also driven by imaginaries and narratives of AI, and AI hype dynamics, involving a multitude of actors.

Public interest tech as a field of technology production has emerged in the past decades and includes state, civic, non-commercial as well as actors in the field of social entrepreneurship aiming to produce technology serving a societal benefit (Abbas et al. 2021). Despite extensive research on theories and case studies on hype dynamics, the field is lacking insights on actors’ perception of their involvement with those dynamics, specifically with regards to non-industry actors.

The first part of this research article provides a theoretical background on the hype around AI based on theories of hype and technology expectations (Van Lente et al. 2013; Dedehayir and Steinert 2016), which sets the stage for the second empirical part. Drawing on case studies and qualitative interviews with practitioners and experts in the public interest technology sector, we focus on two research questions: Firstly, we want to answer how actors in the field of public interest tech relate themselves to and within AI hype dynamics. Secondly, we ask what societal implications build on the involvement of public interest tech actors in AI hype dynamics. We discuss how performing hype and at the same time relating to this hype affects the capability to put societal problems at the center of technology development.

<figure><img src="image_28.png" /></figure>

<footnote>*Corresponding author: zueger@hiig.de</footnote>

<footnote n="1">¹ Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, Berlin, DE</footnote>

<footnote n="2">² Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society, Berlin, DE</footnote>
## Theoretical background:
the sociology of expectations and the
temporality of hype

Hype is a term used to describe high expectations towards technology that manifest on different levels and follow specific dynamics over time. To theoretically frame our understanding of hype, we turn to the sociology of expectations, a theoretical strand within Science and Technology Studies that describes sociotechnical change (Borup et al. 2006; Sovacool and Hess 2017). Akin to theories of discourse and sociotechnical imaginaries, the sociology of expectations focuses on the systems of meaning that surround new technologies (Sovacool and Hess 2017). The sociology of expectations focuses on the involved actors and knowledge communities (Borup et al. 2006) as well as on different levels of expectations (research groups or firms, technological field, technology in society, Van Lente et al. 2013).

Two elements of the sociology of expectations are important to our study: the temporality of expectations and their performative character. The first element, the ‘temporal patterning’ (Borup et al. 2006) of expectations, describes how expectations towards the value of one technology evolve over time. Looking at such a timeline, expectations towards technology often pass a promise-disappointment cycle. For example, in the archetypical form of the Gartner hype cycle, a peak of inflated expectations is followed by a trough of disillusionment, after which a slope of enlightenment leads to a plateau of productivity (Fenn and Raskino 2008; Dedehayir and Steinert 2016). Even though empirical findings on hypes have shown variations in hype cycles and rather complex patterns (Dedehayir and Steinert 2016), the idea of a succession of phases after the emergence of a new technology is helpful to our understanding of the AI hype.

The second central element for our research is the performative character of these expectations. Performativity implies that expectations do not stay on a rhetorical level but result in material consequences and that the phenomenon of hype is construed by its performance. As Borup et al. (2006, p. 292) put it: "'[...] I]n what way do they [narratives and views] become 'inscribed' in texts, actions, bodies, materials, objects and machines [...]?" This performative character of high rising expectations depends on how visions of the future shape the present: "'[T]he promises of the future that make up a hype, have a performative capacity in the present as they attract resources, coordinate activities, and spur competition" (Van Lente et al. 2013, p. 12).

## Seasons come and go:
laying out the case for the AI hype

Regarding AI technology, these high expectations manifest in narratives that focus on the effects of AI that give agency to technology (Vicsek 2021), framing it as a key technology of our time in an ‘age of AI’ or even speaking of an ‘AI revolution’ (Köstler

and Ossewaarde 2022). On the other hand, many narratives are marked by anxieties and dystopian visions, for example in the debate on the future of work (Vicsek 2021), without even mentioning ideological debates on the dangers of AI (Stieler 2023). This charged discourse on AI overall can be described as a mismatch between the expectations and the realities of AI systems, which we want to explain in further detail.

## AI hype and mismatched expectations

In comparison to other hyped technologies, AI can be seen as a ‘long fuse technology’ (Dedehayir and Steinert, 2016), which progresses slowly through a series of highs and lows. AI raises expectations on a societal macro level, addressing technology in society (Van Lente et al. 2013), and triggers ubiquitous promises and rather generic expectations. The potential and power attributed to AI as a technology with general capabilities, whether advancing or detrimental, appear as recurring themes in the discourse on AI. In parallel to these polarized positions regarding AI effects, AI systems in practice have recently sparked a more empirically driven critical debate around AI, pointing to problems of discrimination, security issues as well as false promotions and promises of AI solutions (Buolamwini and Gebru 2018; Kaltheuner and Amironesei 2021; Bender et al. 2021). The discourse of these past months demonstrates an entanglement of different stages of AI hype: AI polarization and overpromising as a sign of hype flourishing and the critical discourse on present AI practices as a sign of disillusionment.

The adaptiveness and general capabilities that are inherent in the imaginaries of AI discourse are at a mismatch to the concrete applications scenarios of AI. One could even regard the term ‘artificial intelligence’ as a symptom of this mismatch as it is being used unspecifically for many different applications and methods. This generalism guides the attention to assumed capabilities and an often-personified idea of AI, and away from a specific use case with clear technical properties and limitations, thus creating a tension between broad rhetorical visions and attempts to discuss application specifics (Sovacool and Hess 2017).

## AI hype and multi-actor assemblage

The many actors involved in the AI hype include the AI industry, governments, research institutions, media and diverse AI funders as well as civil society actors. In the past decade, investment in AI increased 18 times (Maslej et al. 2023). Governments and policy makers take up the narrative of AI being a groundbreaking technology in their national AI strategies (Bareis and Katzenbach 2022) but also contribute to shaping the future by implementing funding for AI. This also becomes visible on the European level, where the integration of AI systems is in many funding initiatives a necessary condition to be eligible for funding (European Commission 2020). This corroborates the finding that “once a technology begins to hype, decision makers in organizations may follow the trend rather than carefully as-
sessing the technology's potential themselves" (Dedehayir and Steinert 2016, p. 29).

In this multi-layered scenario of actors contributing to the AI hype, hype dynamics can start in different public realms or specific communities at different times and follow different patterns. Different stages of AI hype cycles are happening all at once and as argued, they may collide or overlap in public discourse.

In the layered network of actors, the state is often expected to promote a responsible use of AI. Ulnicane et al. (2021, p. 171) diagnose a current “governance frame [that] assigns more active and collaborative roles to the state and society”, which is also a way of trying to counterbalance the oligopoly of few companies and increasingly acknowledged risks and ambiguities of AI systems.

## AI hype and public interest tech

The current hype around artificial intelligence amplifies prevalent questions of responsibility and accountability in the development of AI applications. “Hype pushes the discourse of ML/AI towards unrealistic questions, and popular representations in the media might relocate responsibility to those with less control of the outcomes” (Slota et al. 2020, p. 7). The hype goes along with a high policy priority in which political actors at least discursively try to counterbalance the power of big tech: Ethical debates are ever-present, and high expectations are allocated to public engagement. Designing artificial intelligence in the public interest, despite most often very limited resources, therefore comes with an extended set of ambiguous but high expectations.

In contrast to the rather few commercial drivers of the AI industry that heavily dominate the public discourse as well as the economic landscape around artificial intelligence, public interest technology projects do not fit into a logic of maximiz-

## Methods

The underlying study employed a mixed-methods approach, consisting of ten case studies, based on document analysis and semi-structured interviews, and 17 additional semi-structured expert interviews to investigate public interest tech projects developing AI applications. The interviews gathered data on the experts' understanding of public interest AI, the potentials, risks and challenges these actors identify as well as their views on support and funding that is needed. For the case studies, a positive sampling technique was employed to select public interest tech actors that represented a diverse range of initiatives in the fields of sustainability, consumer protection, social issues such as equity and gender equality, labor issues and work-related applications. Conditions for this sampling were the advanced stage of the project, and the feasibility of analysis of the case in the timeframe of the study. For the expert interviews, again a positive sampling method was utilized to identify 17 experts with significant experience and expertise in the public interest tech field, particularly in Germany.

Overall, 20 semi-structured interviews were conducted with a selection of the case studies and the selected 17 experts. Interviews were conducted following a responsive interviewing approach (Rubin and Rubin 2012), the interview guide was developed following Helfferich (2019) and consisted of narrative prompts for each section as well as optional follow-up questions.

For the purpose of this research article, the collected data, including interview transcripts and documents, were re-analyzed and subjected to qualitative content analysis. The analysis process followed an extractive and structured approach (Gläser and Laudel 2010; Kuckartz 2018). AI hype emerged as a theme from our data: Although the phenomenon of AI hype was not the original focus of our interview question, many interview partners proactively started to use the term ‘hype’ and directly or in-

> *One could even regard the term ‘artificial intelligence’ as a symptom of the mismatch as it is being used unspecifically for many different applications and methods.*

ing profits. Public interest technology in general can be defined as “the application of design, data, and delivery to advance the public interest and promote the public good in the digital age” (McGuinness and Schank 2021, p. ix). Actors from the public interest tech sector implementing AI systems often share the goal to not only use AI systems for a societal benefit, but also procedurally reflect the public interest in the development technology. This can be done for instance by following data ethics, having a higher level of transparency and entry points for deliberation, or inclusive problem-solving and openness (Züger et al. 2022).

directly explained in their statements how they relate to it. The codes were organized based on this emerging theme and categories were developed that capture different themes of relation to AI hype of public interest tech projects according to our focus of research. This analysis method allowed a systematic examination of the data. By employing this mixed-methods approach, combining case studies and expert interviews, the study aimed to provide a comprehensive understanding of how actors in the field of public interest tech relate themselves to AI hype dynamics and how performing hype and at the same time engaging with this hype affects society overall.
# Empirical findings

Looking at the empirical data from the interviews and case studies, we used the aforementioned theoretical background and research on AI hype as a lens to describe the occurrence of hype in our data and how actors perform or describe their relation to the phenomenon. The descriptions of their positions towards the hype and how their perception influences their decisions, is what we see as the mentioned performative nature of the AI hype. We will introduce this in examples in the following sections and draw attention to a specific act of hype performativity, namely the claim of resisting the hype, which was evident in our findings.

## Performativity of AI hype

Firstly, AI hype contributes to certain beneficial conditions for public interest tech projects. In our case studies and interviews, two concrete beneficial aspects resulting from hype were mentioned several times: the emergence of support structures and community-building.

The support structures described by the experts included funding possibilities as well as immaterial competence training, coaching or networking events. One common aspect that can be found in our data is that public interest tech initiatives are aware of AI-focussed funding possibilities, one expert describing that “here is of course a very classic promotion of hype”, allocating “several hundred million for AI” (Expert Interview (in the following EI) 15). The study participants acknowledge that implementing AI technologies in public interest tech projects is helpful for them to access funding. The founders of a tool aiming to automate gender sensitive writing in documents described AI as a “hot topic” that helped gain support for their idea. Another project which dealt with estimating the irrigation needs of trees was actively looking for calls with a focus on urban development, climate and AI. The increasingly critical public discussion on risks of AI technologies led to an increased willingness of public or philanthropic funders to support projects that aim to compensate for flaws of AI, which is the case for one of our case studies, in which the project team aimed to build a non-discriminatory dataset.

A second aspect beneficial to public interest tech organizations is community building through visibility of public interest tech. Publicly visible public interest AI projects have a signaling-effect for other projects and potentially lead to stronger networks of public interest tech, increasing the chances to “have a community of people who can also support each other” (EI06).

Because of more public interest oriented initiatives working on AI and sharing their work there is a higher availability of open source and free AI-related resources such as training data or software building blocks. Many projects build on open-source resources, like one of our cases that built on and extended open streetmap data (EI19). According to the founders of an AI system for more accessibility of mobile devices, their project could

never have come this far “if there hadn’t been so many other free projects that we could have used in our systems” (EI20).

The participation of volunteers, that a number of public interest tech projects deeply rely on, is increased by the current hype on AI. This can be illustrated by a project that relies on voice data donations, which currently many volunteers contribute to: “Most communities are very excited about the idea of key technology products being offered in their language for the first time” (EI18).

## Positioning within the hype

Aside from these descriptions of hype benefits, the main mention of the AI hype was from a critical perspective. For example, one expert describes the use of the AI terminology in the public funding context as being

> "[...] mainly used on the political level, [as] totally blurred, where everyone is allowed to interpret what they think they mean. And these are more projection surfaces than concrete terms, and that also makes the discussion very difficult, because [...] everyone means something completely different." (EI05)

This broad use of the term ‘AI’ was identified as a major problem by many of the experts, who perceive it as a “massive buzzword” (EI06) and report that the innovative aura of the technology has also reached the public interest tech scene admitting that “actually it’s always totally unclear what we’re talking about” (EI06).

Aside from this general critique towards an unspecified use of the term, our findings showed in many statements a clear critique of AI hype. Interestingly, this critique has the effect of the speaker distancing themselves from the hype, implying that the speaker is rather an observer confronted with a hype they need to deal with, rather than an active part in the hype dynamic. One key point of the critique is that the aforementioned benefits (and funding opportunities) were dependent on the use of AI techniques, e.g. machine learning, thus limited to a specific technology, which the participants of our study saw as problematic, since it limited their ability to adjust and choose technologies for their projects freely. The experts described this system as being exploitable too, mentioning that they used the term AI to apply for funding, even if their project does not or only partly use AI technologies. “Of course, we sometimes write AI on our applications, [...] even though we know that it is actually data, that we simply visualize data, make explorative analyses, reports, and so on.” (EI06)

This dynamic, that the term AI can be (mis-)used to gain funding, was discussed with different sentiments: While some openly admitted using the term strategically, others described this practice critically. Their criticism was focused on the funding system itself, embedding and enforcing an exclusive focus on AI technology. More specifically, study participants criticized that this deterministic focus on AI in funding calls shifted
the focus of interest away from actual problems and towards the technology, explaining that data driven projects should only be adopted if the technology supports their goals: “And if we realize, our impact logic has nothing to do with AI, then we don’t need it. [...] We always need to see how it actually helps us to improve our work.” (EI06)

From the interviews we understand that actors try to actively distance themselves from being a part of the hype, and describe their intent to resist it because the values driving their projects are partly in conflict with the temporality and side effects of

addressing them or reforming the current economic systems which might be the root cause of some of [the] concerns about AI development and use” (Ulnicane et al. 2021, p. 171).

An additional reason for why the choice to focus solely on AI as a technology is problematic, can be explained by a concept that Slota et al. (2020, p. 7) call a “well-socialized technology”, which is based on a good understanding of who is responsible for what in regards to the technological use in society:

## AI hype contributes to certain beneficial conditions for public interest tech projects.

hype. From these actors' point of view, hype provides opportunities but also results in a dependency on changing and unreliable funding tides. Most public interest tech actors are committed to social and ecological sustainability, which implies a somewhat hype-adverse disposition in their work, as their work is built on long-term use and re-use. One conclusion an expert drew was that “the question how I can use AI for social good is the wrong question, because it is techno-centric. We need to learn to think [...] starting with the problem” (EI17).

## Discussion: public interest tech within the AI hype

Our findings show that public interest tech actors find themselves in a paradoxical relation to AI hype: They benefit from hype, but also have contrary values and needs. Limiting funding to AI technology neglects the less visible tasks and parts of a project that are often underfunded already: maintenance, capacity building, or foundational data structures. The public tech sector exemplifies how “hypes can [...] be considered as a resource as well as a pitfall” (Van Lente et al. 2013, p. 1626).

Especially in the context of public interest technology, hype dynamics are seen as problematic, because the needs and problems of society don't follow hype cycles. The focus of funding on one technology encourages non-profit actors to focus on it, rather than on the societal problems they address – with which-ever means best suited. Moreover, hype dynamics stand in con-trast with sustainable funding, which is a huge problem for pub-lic interest tech projects to find. With a focus on AI, the needed infrastructure and resources are immense and hard to sustain. Addressing this issue of a focus on technology, Ulinicane et al. argue that this framing in a debate is a choice and not a neces-sity. They argue that

“alternative frames are possible, for example, prioritizing tackling societal problems where AI is one of [the] means

“A well-socialized technology is one [...] where sufficient implicit knowledge exists that misrepresentation is relatively visible, and misunderstandings can be more readily corrected. More specifically, the socialization of technology speaks to its visibility and in shared understandings of its role” (Slota et al. 2020, p. 7).

The authors claim that this is lacking for AI and see “a problem of the socialization of AI” (Slota et al. 2020, p. 7). Building on this idea, the expectations towards AI mismatching actual AI systems’ performance can be seen as a symptom of a badly-socialized technology. A better socialization of AI in Slota’s understanding would contribute to more nuanced expectations and could position AI amongst other technologies in a complex socio-technical scenario with societal issues at center.

Finally, our findings highlight the power imbalance that is inherent in the AI sector. Several actors profit from the hype around AI. Through its funding programs, the European Commission invests one billion euros per year in AI and additionally mobilizes investments from the private sector and its Member States to reach an annual investment of 20 billion euros over the course of this decade (EAIF 2021). However, the major part of these investments goes to for-profit companies, which creates a massive imbalance in the field of actors developing AI, since it is for-profit actors who hold the most data, infrastructure and financial resources.

## Conclusion

Regarding our research question how actors in the field of public interest tech relate themselves to AI hype, our findings show that these actors are in a paradoxical position. On a smaller scale than commercial actors, those using AI in the public interest can benefit from the general AI hype but remarkably exhibit their critique and intent to resist the hype as well.
On a societal level, our results on public interest tech point to the need for a clearer societal understanding of the socio-technical systems of AI technologies as well as the responsibilities of involved actors. Public interest technology development is a resource beyond the technologies themselves: The sector is a political sphere, which involves civil society in the development of technology. Public interest technology includes an awareness of the sociotechnical conditions and contexts. Crucially, it aims to put societal needs at the core and gives citizens a stake in the discourse and the governance of technology. This approach involves a pluralistic and participatory governance of data and models as digital commons, it aims to challenge prevalent structures of power by being inclusive of volunteers and citizens and giving affected communities a say over their data. The hype around AI is a highly political issue, since not only is AI playing an increasingly important role in all aspects of life, but also the hype itself is impacting our societies extensively. The existence of public interest tech projects developing and implementing AI and their critical assessment of the AI hype is a reminder of how things could be otherwise. On a final note, as researchers writing about AI hype, and thereby identifying as the observers of the phenomenon, we, similar to our interview partners, are, by participating in this discourse, at the same time part of this puzzling hype phenomenon.

**Funding** • This work received no funding.

**Competing interests** • The authors declare no competing interests.

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<figure><img src="image_29.png" /></figure>

DR. THERESA ZÜGER

is the lead of the AI & Society Lab at the Alexander
von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society
since 2020 and head of the Public Interest AI
research group funded by the German Federal
Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

<figure><img src="image_30.png" /></figure>

FREIA KUPER

is a researcher at Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society within the research programme “Knowledge and Society”. Her research interest concerns digital infrastructures as spaces of knowledge production and dissemination.

<figure><img src="image_31.png" /></figure>

JUDITH FASSBENDER

is a researcher at the Humboldt Institute for Inter-
net & Society in Berlin and a PhD Student at the
University of St Andrews. Her research interest lies
in the potentials, challenges and limits of partici-
patory and deliberative methods in data governance.

<figure><img src="image_32.png" /></figure>

ANNA KATZY-REINSHAGEN

is studying for her Master’s degree at Sciences Po Paris and FU Berlin European Affairs with a focus on digital politics. Previously, she studied Social Sciences at Sciences Po Paris and Humboldt University Berlin (B.A.). She is currently working as a student assistant at the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society.

<figure><img src="image_33.png" /></figure>

IRINA KÜHNLEIN

is a Master's student of European Media Studies at the University of Potsdam and the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam. Currently, she is working as a student assistant at the Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society in the AI & Society Lab.

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Simon Aicher, Dr. rer. nat., Dept. Timber Constructions and Unit Green Engineering, Materials Testing Institute (MPA), University of Stuttgart, DE

Cordula Kropp, Prof. Dr. phil., Chair of Sociology of Technology, Risk and Environment, Institute for Social Sciences, University of Stuttgart, DE
# Technology hype, promises, and expectations: The discussion on small modular reactors in the Finnish newspaper 'Helsingin Sanomat' in 2000–2022

Mika Kari\*,<fnref n="1" /> ID, Markku Lehtonen<fnref n="2" /> ID, Tapio Litmanen<fnref n="1" /> ID, Matti Kojo<fnref n="3" />,<fnref n="4" /> ID

**Abstract** • While the construction of collective promises is vital to the success of any techno-scientific innovation, it also entails the risk of overpromising and cycles of hype and disappointment. This article explores the discursive construction of the nuclear sector's latest promise concerning small modular reactors (SMRs), using Finland as an example. It provides a brief overview of the Finnish context of SMR development and analyzes its coverage in the leading Finnish daily newspaper Helsingin Sanomat 2000–2022. Efforts at promise construction have so far been aimed at building legitimacy for SMRs, while strengthening credibility – another key element of successful promise construction – has only just begun. The increasing number of SMR-related articles indicates a growing hype, but the absence of a corresponding ‘hype language’ suggests that the considerable media attention does not automatically translate into emphatic media coverage and discursive hyping.

**Technologie-Hype, Versprechen und Erwartungen:**
Diskussion über kleine modulare Reaktoren in der finnischen Tageszeitung Helsingin Sanomat im Zeitraum 2000–2022

**Zusammenfassung** • Die Konstruktion kollektiver Versprechen ist zwar für den Erfolg jeder technologisch-wissenschaftlichen Innovation von entscheidender Bedeutung, birgt jedoch auch das Risiko allzu gro-

ßer Versprechungen und Hype-Zyklen sowie Enttäuschung. Dieser Forschungsartikel untersucht die diskursive Konstruktion neuester Versprechen im Nuklearsektor am Beispiel kleiner modularer Reaktoren (SMRs) in Finnland. Er gibt einen kurzen Überblick über die SMR-Entwicklung in Finnland und analysiert die Berichterstattung in der führenden finnischen Tageszeitung Helsingin Sanomat zwischen 2000 und 2022. Bisher zielten die Bemühungen darauf ab, die Legitimität von SMRs zu stärken, während die Verbesserung der Glaubwürdigkeit – eine weitere wichtige Voraussetzung für die erfolgreiche Konstruktion von Versprechen – gerade erst begonnen hat. Die wachsende Zahl von SMR-bezogenen Artikeln deutet auf einen zunehmenden Hype hin, aber das Fehlen einer entsprechenden „Hype-Sprache“ legt nahe, dass die beträchtliche Medienaufmerksamkeit nicht automatisch zu einer verstärkten Medienberichterstattung und einem diskursiven Hype führt.

**Keywords** • techno-scientific promises, media analysis, hype cycle, nuclear energy, small modular reactors

This article is part of the Special topic “Technology hype: Dealing with bold expectations and overpromising” edited by J. Bareis, M. Roßmann and F. Bordignon. https://doi.org/10.14512/tatup.32.3.10

## Introduction

There is a need to better understand how technological future scripts and technological hype cycles are constructed and how they evolve. Science and Technology Studies (STS) have shown that techno-scientific promises and expectations have significant performative power to shape the trajectories of modern societies (Konrad et al. 2016).

This research article applies the perspective of sociology of expectations to explore the intertwining of the hype and con-

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<footnote>* Corresponding author: mika.kari@jyu.fi</footnote>

<footnote n="1">¹ University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, FI</footnote>

<footnote n="2">² Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona, ES</footnote>

<footnote n="3">³ LUT University, Lappeenranta, FI</footnote>

<footnote n="4">⁴ Tampere University, FI</footnote>