Responsible research and innovation (RRI) has become an intensively debated concept for shaping future science, technology and innovation. This book is dedicated to the hermeneutic dimension of this concept by focusing on the first steps of emerging RRI debates. The main message is that the object of responsibility must be extended: beyond scrutinizing the responsibility for possible consequences of new science and technology in a more distant future, it is highly relevant to carefully observe the assignment of meaning to new science and technology in early stages of their development. Meaning is attributed by relating new science and technology to social and usually techno-visionary futures as well as by definitions and characterizations of these new fields. The aims of this book are to uncover these processes of assigning meaning, to put them in the context of responsibility, and to sketch a hermeneutic approach as an interdisciplinary research program for achieving a better understanding.

This book builds on research done by the author in the recent years and develops it further. An explanation of the origins of the various chapters and their relation to preceding work at the end of this book makes the novel approach transparent and shows clearly where I refer to existing work. The notion of hermeneutics with which I experimented over the last years serves as a conceptual umbrella.

Thanks have to be expressed in different respects. First, I would like to warmly thank Bernard Reber for inviting me to publish this book in the Responsible Research and Innovation set of books. Second, I highly benefited from many debates on RRI with my colleagues from the Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS) and with many colleagues from all over the world. Third, the fantastic work of Sylke Wintzer, Miriam Miklitz, and Michael Wilson on translation and proofreading made it possible to publish this book in excellent quality. Last but not least, I would like to thank Nina Katharina Hauer for carefully organizing the references and the bibliography.

Armin GRUNWALD
September 2016