Abstract

The assessment of the impacts of sociotechnical futures on processes of innovation is a continuing challenge for technology assessment. Imaginations of the future shape communications and actions in the present. They do not deliver any information about the outcome of these processes. This seems to contradict the task of TA to provide future-oriented knowledge. But vision assessment can provide knowledge concerning ongoing changes in sociotechnical arrangements and options for intervention. Our approach presents a heuristic for analyzing visions as socio-epistemic practices, which rearrange actors in innovation processes. In our cases—Big Data, Smart Grid and FabLabs—we identify dynamics in power constellations which might enable or restrain future innovations.