The pervasiveness of ICTs in healthcare is modifying professional-patient relationship. The de- bate, as often happens with innovations, is polarized and technology is considered with enthusiasm or sheer pessimism. Several works have tried to move beyond this simplistic positioning and address the intricacies and complexities of adopting technologies (Pols 2012; Piras and Miele 2020). Despite such efforts, the dichotomy tends to repeat itself and to move beyond we need to understand how this is created and reinforced. Focusing on the professional community of computer scientists, the paper analyzes techno- enthusiasm to understand how it originates, how it is re-created over time and discursively performed and enacted. The argumentation will be twofold. Firstly, I will show how the professional culture of informatics is imbued with high expectations with regard to the possibility of reshaping society through technology. In the scientific community, these values are promoted favoring the presentation of success cases instead of reflections about failures. Secondly, I shall focus on the role of ‘scenarios’ in shaping an enthusiastic perspective with regard to technology. Scenarios, formally created to present a realistic use case, are powerful rhetorical devices that shape the desired future and foster a culture techno-enthusiasm by oversimplifying the complexities that technology will need to address thus making possible develop over-optimistic expectations regarding its adoption. I argue that both techno-enthusiasm and techno-pessimism, far from being personal positioning, demarcate professional boundaries they are reproduced in patterned activities. Moving beyond the dichotomy requires identifying the locus and the practices in which each professional community performs and reinforces between techno-enthusiasm or techno-pessimism. Pols, J. (2012), Care at a distance: on the closeness of technology. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Piras, E.M. and Miele, F. (in press) On digital intimacy: redefining provider–patient relationships in remote monitoring. Sociology of Health & Illness.
Victims of scenario-thinking. On the making of optimism and unrealistic expectations about ICTs
Enrico Maria Piras
2019-01-01
Abstract
The pervasiveness of ICTs in healthcare is modifying professional-patient relationship. The de- bate, as often happens with innovations, is polarized and technology is considered with enthusiasm or sheer pessimism. Several works have tried to move beyond this simplistic positioning and address the intricacies and complexities of adopting technologies (Pols 2012; Piras and Miele 2020). Despite such efforts, the dichotomy tends to repeat itself and to move beyond we need to understand how this is created and reinforced. Focusing on the professional community of computer scientists, the paper analyzes techno- enthusiasm to understand how it originates, how it is re-created over time and discursively performed and enacted. The argumentation will be twofold. Firstly, I will show how the professional culture of informatics is imbued with high expectations with regard to the possibility of reshaping society through technology. In the scientific community, these values are promoted favoring the presentation of success cases instead of reflections about failures. Secondly, I shall focus on the role of ‘scenarios’ in shaping an enthusiastic perspective with regard to technology. Scenarios, formally created to present a realistic use case, are powerful rhetorical devices that shape the desired future and foster a culture techno-enthusiasm by oversimplifying the complexities that technology will need to address thus making possible develop over-optimistic expectations regarding its adoption. I argue that both techno-enthusiasm and techno-pessimism, far from being personal positioning, demarcate professional boundaries they are reproduced in patterned activities. Moving beyond the dichotomy requires identifying the locus and the practices in which each professional community performs and reinforces between techno-enthusiasm or techno-pessimism. Pols, J. (2012), Care at a distance: on the closeness of technology. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Piras, E.M. and Miele, F. (in press) On digital intimacy: redefining provider–patient relationships in remote monitoring. Sociology of Health & Illness.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
