Jack Stilgoe
Biographic Data
| ID | 134637 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jack Stilgoe |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jack |
| FAMILY NAME | Stilgoe |
| SIGNATURE | STILGOE J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University College London |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5787-2198 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 335 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Public anticipations of self-driving vehicles in the UK and US
Developers of self-driving vehicles (SDVs) work with a particular idea of a possible and desirable future. Members of the public may not share the assumptions on which this is based. In this paper we analyse freetext responses from surveys of UK (n 4,860) and US (n 1,890) publics, which ask respondents what springs to mind when they think of SDVs, and why they should or should not be developed. Responses (averaging a total 27 words per participan…
Socially-distanced science: How British publics were imagined, modelled and marginalised in political and expert responses to the Covid-19 pandemic
In early 2021, the United Kingdom (UK) had the highest per capita death rate from Covid-19 of any large country. Yet it had previously been ranked as one of the best prepared countries for a future pandemic. This gap between preparedness and performance has been the subject of intense debate, including as part of the UK Covid-19 Inquiry. In this paper, we contribute to this ongoing process of reflection by identifying the imagined public(s) withi…
The politics of autonomous vehicles
Self-driving, ‘autonomous’ vehicles (AVs) promise to change the world in profound ways. The suggested benefits include safety, efficiency and accessibility. However, researchers and others have been quick to raise questions about wider implications for mobility and urban environments and responsible development of the technology. In a discussion that has been dominated by science, engineering and narrow questions of ethics, there is a need to dra…
How can we know a self-driving car is safe
Self-driving cars promise solutions to some of the hazards of human driving but there are important questions about the safety of these new technologies. This paper takes a qualitative social science approach to the question ‘how safe is safe enough?’ Drawing on 50 interviews with people developing and researching self-driving cars, I describe two dominant narratives of safety. The first, safety-in-numbers, sees safety as a self-evident property …
The politics of scaling
A fixation on 'scaling up' has captured current innovation discourses and, with it, political and economic life at large. Perhaps most visible in the rise of platform technologies, big data and concerns about a new era of monopolies, scalability thinking has also permeated public policy in the search for solutions to 'grand societal challenges', 'mission-oriented innovation' or transformations through experimental 'living labs'. In this paper, we…
The attachments of ‘autonomous’ vehicles
The ideal of the self-driving car replaces an error-prone human with an infallible, artificially intelligent driver. This narrative of autonomy promises liberation from the downsides of automobility, even if that means taking control away from autonomous, free-moving individuals. We look behind this narrative to understand the attachments that so-called 'autonomous' vehicles (AVs) are likely to have to the world. Drawing on 50 interviews with AV …
It's Time to Rethink Levels of Automation for Self-Driving Vehicles [Opinion]
Discusses issues involving the automation of self-driving vehicles. Reports on the technology of self-driving or autonomous automobiles. Examines the extent to which these vehicles serve the public interest as well as the level of consumer confidence in driving these vehicles. Suggests that self-driving cars could be a transformative technology in both good and bad ways. The important questions are not to do with when they will arrive but where, …
Who’s Driving Innovation: New Technologies and the Collaborative State
Who’s Driving Innovation: New Technologies and the Collaborative State
Reframing the governance of automotive automation: Insights from UK stakeholder workshops
How should policymakers engage with the possibilities of self-driving cars? Considering the major investment in systems involving self-driving cars and their speedy development, their social complexity has received inadequate attention. The anticipation necessary for good governance can be informed only in part by experiments such as testing self-driving cars on open roads, and there is a need to broaden the set of issues that are considered rele…
Seeing Like a Tesla: How Can We Anticipate Self-Driving Worlds
In the last five years, investment and innovation in self-driving cars has accelerated dramatically. Automotive autonomy, once seen as impossible, is now sold as inevitable. Much of the governance discussion has centred on risk: will the cars be safer than their human-controlled counterparts? As with conventional cars, harder long-term questions relate to the future worlds that self-driving technologies might enable or even demand. The vision of …
Machine learning, social learning and the governance of self-driving cars
Self-driving cars, a quintessentially 'smart' technology, are not born smart. The algorithms that control their movements are learning as the technology emerges. Self-driving cars represent a high-stakes test of the powers of machine learning, as well as a test case for social learning in technology governance. Society is learning about the technology while the technology learns about society. Understanding and governing the politics of this tech…
Inovação responsável através de fronteiras: Tensões, Paradoxos E Possibilidades
Este artigo explora as tensões, paradoxos e possibilidades da inovação responsável em contextos transnacionais. Argumenta-se que a inovação responsável, embora apresente um potencial transformador, enfrenta desafios significativos quando aplicada em diferentes culturas e sistemas de governança. O artigo destaca a importância de considerar as especificidades locais e a necessidade de abordagens flexíveis e adaptativas para promover a inovação resp…
Why should we promote public engagement with science
This introductory essay looks back on the two decades since the journal Public Understanding of Science was launched. Drawing on the invited commentaries in this special issue, we can see narratives of continuity and change around the practice and politics of public engagement with science. Public engagement would seem to be a necessary but insufficient part of opening up science and its governance. Those of us who have been involved in advocatin…
Responsible innovation across borders: Tensions, paradoxes and possibilities
In March 2014 a group of early career researchers and academics from São Paulo state and from the UK met at the University of Campinas to participate in a workshop on ‘Responsible Innovation and the Governance of Socially Controversial Technologies’. In this Perspective we describe key reflections and observations from the workshop discussions, paying particular attention to the discourse of responsible innovation from a cross-cultural perspectiv…
Why Solar Radiation Management Geoengineering and Democracy Won't Mix
In this paper we argue that recent policy treatments of solar radiation management (SRM) have insufficiently addressed its potential implications for contemporary political systems. Exploring the emerging 'social constitution' of SRM, we outline four reasons why this is likely to pose immense challenges to liberal democratic politics: That the unequal distribution of and uncertainties about SRM impacts will cause conflicts within existing institu…
Experiments in Science Policy: An Autobiographical Note
Responsible research and innovation: From science in society to science for society, with society
The term responsible (research and) innovation has gained increasing EU policy relevance in the last two years, in particular within the European Commission's Science in Society programme, in the context of the Horizon 2020 Strategy. We provide a brief historical overview of the concept, and identify three distinct features that are emerging from associated discourses. The first is an emphasis on the democratic governance of the purposes of resea…
Experts and Anecdotes: The Role of ‘‘Anecdotal Evidence’’ in Public Scientific Controversies
Anecdotal evidence'' has become a central point of contention in two recent controversies over science and technology (We follow Nelkin (1992, 10) in referring to our cases as controversies over science and technology.) in the United Kingdom and a contact point between individuals, expert institutions, and policy decisions. We argue that the term is central to the management of the boundary between experts and nonexperts, with consequences for id…
The (co-)production of public uncertainty: UK scientific advice on mobile phone health risks
UK scientific advice on the possible health risks of mobile phones has embraced (or seems to be embracing) broader engagement with interested non-experts. This paper explains the context of lost credibility that made such a development necessary, and the implications of greater engagement for the construction (and expert control) of “public concern.” I narrate how scientific advice matured from an approach based on compliance with guidelines to a…
Some Reservations about the Gap Concept
Responsible research and innovation: From science in society to science for society, with society
The term responsible (research and) innovation has gained increasing EU policy relevance in the last two years, in particular within the European Commission's Science in Society programme, in the context of the Horizon 2020 Strategy. We provide a brief historical overview of the concept, and identify three distinct features that are emerging from associated discourses. The first is an emphasis on the democratic governance of the purposes of resea…
Machine learning, social learning and the governance of self-driving cars
Self-driving cars, a quintessentially 'smart' technology, are not born smart. The algorithms that control their movements are learning as the technology emerges. Self-driving cars represent a high-stakes test of the powers of machine learning, as well as a test case for social learning in technology governance. Society is learning about the technology while the technology learns about society. Understanding and governing the politics of this tech…
The politics of scaling
A fixation on 'scaling up' has captured current innovation discourses and, with it, political and economic life at large. Perhaps most visible in the rise of platform technologies, big data and concerns about a new era of monopolies, scalability thinking has also permeated public policy in the search for solutions to 'grand societal challenges', 'mission-oriented innovation' or transformations through experimental 'living labs'. In this paper, we…
Why Solar Radiation Management Geoengineering and Democracy Won't Mix
In this paper we argue that recent policy treatments of solar radiation management (SRM) have insufficiently addressed its potential implications for contemporary political systems. Exploring the emerging 'social constitution' of SRM, we outline four reasons why this is likely to pose immense challenges to liberal democratic politics: That the unequal distribution of and uncertainties about SRM impacts will cause conflicts within existing institu…
Experts and Anecdotes: The Role of ‘‘Anecdotal Evidence’’ in Public Scientific Controversies
Anecdotal evidence'' has become a central point of contention in two recent controversies over science and technology (We follow Nelkin (1992, 10) in referring to our cases as controversies over science and technology.) in the United Kingdom and a contact point between individuals, expert institutions, and policy decisions. We argue that the term is central to the management of the boundary between experts and nonexperts, with consequences for id…
The attachments of ‘autonomous’ vehicles
The ideal of the self-driving car replaces an error-prone human with an infallible, artificially intelligent driver. This narrative of autonomy promises liberation from the downsides of automobility, even if that means taking control away from autonomous, free-moving individuals. We look behind this narrative to understand the attachments that so-called 'autonomous' vehicles (AVs) are likely to have to the world. Drawing on 50 interviews with AV …
Experiments in Science Policy: An Autobiographical Note
Seeing Like a Tesla: How Can We Anticipate Self-Driving Worlds
In the last five years, investment and innovation in self-driving cars has accelerated dramatically. Automotive autonomy, once seen as impossible, is now sold as inevitable. Much of the governance discussion has centred on risk: will the cars be safer than their human-controlled counterparts? As with conventional cars, harder long-term questions relate to the future worlds that self-driving technologies might enable or even demand. The vision of …
Public anticipations of self-driving vehicles in the UK and US
Developers of self-driving vehicles (SDVs) work with a particular idea of a possible and desirable future. Members of the public may not share the assumptions on which this is based. In this paper we analyse freetext responses from surveys of UK (n 4,860) and US (n 1,890) publics, which ask respondents what springs to mind when they think of SDVs, and why they should or should not be developed. Responses (averaging a total 27 words per participan…
Some Reservations about the Gap Concept
The (co-)production of public uncertainty: UK scientific advice on mobile phone health risks
UK scientific advice on the possible health risks of mobile phones has embraced (or seems to be embracing) broader engagement with interested non-experts. This paper explains the context of lost credibility that made such a development necessary, and the implications of greater engagement for the construction (and expert control) of “public concern.” I narrate how scientific advice matured from an approach based on compliance with guidelines to a…
Experts and Anecdotes: The Role of ‘‘Anecdotal Evidence’’ in Public Scientific Controversies
Anecdotal evidence'' has become a central point of contention in two recent controversies over science and technology (We follow Nelkin (1992, 10) in referring to our cases as controversies over science and technology.) in the United Kingdom and a contact point between individuals, expert institutions, and policy decisions. We argue that the term is central to the management of the boundary between experts and nonexperts, with consequences for id…
Experiments in Science Policy: An Autobiographical Note
Responsible research and innovation: From science in society to science for society, with society
The term responsible (research and) innovation has gained increasing EU policy relevance in the last two years, in particular within the European Commission's Science in Society programme, in the context of the Horizon 2020 Strategy. We provide a brief historical overview of the concept, and identify three distinct features that are emerging from associated discourses. The first is an emphasis on the democratic governance of the purposes of resea…
Why Solar Radiation Management Geoengineering and Democracy Won't Mix
In this paper we argue that recent policy treatments of solar radiation management (SRM) have insufficiently addressed its potential implications for contemporary political systems. Exploring the emerging 'social constitution' of SRM, we outline four reasons why this is likely to pose immense challenges to liberal democratic politics: That the unequal distribution of and uncertainties about SRM impacts will cause conflicts within existing institu…
Why should we promote public engagement with science
This introductory essay looks back on the two decades since the journal Public Understanding of Science was launched. Drawing on the invited commentaries in this special issue, we can see narratives of continuity and change around the practice and politics of public engagement with science. Public engagement would seem to be a necessary but insufficient part of opening up science and its governance. Those of us who have been involved in advocatin…
Responsible innovation across borders: Tensions, paradoxes and possibilities
In March 2014 a group of early career researchers and academics from São Paulo state and from the UK met at the University of Campinas to participate in a workshop on ‘Responsible Innovation and the Governance of Socially Controversial Technologies’. In this Perspective we describe key reflections and observations from the workshop discussions, paying particular attention to the discourse of responsible innovation from a cross-cultural perspectiv…
Inovação responsável através de fronteiras: Tensões, Paradoxos E Possibilidades
Este artigo explora as tensões, paradoxos e possibilidades da inovação responsável em contextos transnacionais. Argumenta-se que a inovação responsável, embora apresente um potencial transformador, enfrenta desafios significativos quando aplicada em diferentes culturas e sistemas de governança. O artigo destaca a importância de considerar as especificidades locais e a necessidade de abordagens flexíveis e adaptativas para promover a inovação resp…
Seeing Like a Tesla: How Can We Anticipate Self-Driving Worlds
In the last five years, investment and innovation in self-driving cars has accelerated dramatically. Automotive autonomy, once seen as impossible, is now sold as inevitable. Much of the governance discussion has centred on risk: will the cars be safer than their human-controlled counterparts? As with conventional cars, harder long-term questions relate to the future worlds that self-driving technologies might enable or even demand. The vision of …
Machine learning, social learning and the governance of self-driving cars
Self-driving cars, a quintessentially 'smart' technology, are not born smart. The algorithms that control their movements are learning as the technology emerges. Self-driving cars represent a high-stakes test of the powers of machine learning, as well as a test case for social learning in technology governance. Society is learning about the technology while the technology learns about society. Understanding and governing the politics of this tech…
Reframing the governance of automotive automation: Insights from UK stakeholder workshops
How should policymakers engage with the possibilities of self-driving cars? Considering the major investment in systems involving self-driving cars and their speedy development, their social complexity has received inadequate attention. The anticipation necessary for good governance can be informed only in part by experiments such as testing self-driving cars on open roads, and there is a need to broaden the set of issues that are considered rele…
Who’s Driving Innovation: New Technologies and the Collaborative State
It's Time to Rethink Levels of Automation for Self-Driving Vehicles [Opinion]
Discusses issues involving the automation of self-driving vehicles. Reports on the technology of self-driving or autonomous automobiles. Examines the extent to which these vehicles serve the public interest as well as the level of consumer confidence in driving these vehicles. Suggests that self-driving cars could be a transformative technology in both good and bad ways. The important questions are not to do with when they will arrive but where, …
Who’s Driving Innovation: New Technologies and the Collaborative State
How can we know a self-driving car is safe
Self-driving cars promise solutions to some of the hazards of human driving but there are important questions about the safety of these new technologies. This paper takes a qualitative social science approach to the question ‘how safe is safe enough?’ Drawing on 50 interviews with people developing and researching self-driving cars, I describe two dominant narratives of safety. The first, safety-in-numbers, sees safety as a self-evident property …
The politics of scaling
A fixation on 'scaling up' has captured current innovation discourses and, with it, political and economic life at large. Perhaps most visible in the rise of platform technologies, big data and concerns about a new era of monopolies, scalability thinking has also permeated public policy in the search for solutions to 'grand societal challenges', 'mission-oriented innovation' or transformations through experimental 'living labs'. In this paper, we…
The attachments of ‘autonomous’ vehicles
The ideal of the self-driving car replaces an error-prone human with an infallible, artificially intelligent driver. This narrative of autonomy promises liberation from the downsides of automobility, even if that means taking control away from autonomous, free-moving individuals. We look behind this narrative to understand the attachments that so-called 'autonomous' vehicles (AVs) are likely to have to the world. Drawing on 50 interviews with AV …
The politics of autonomous vehicles
Self-driving, ‘autonomous’ vehicles (AVs) promise to change the world in profound ways. The suggested benefits include safety, efficiency and accessibility. However, researchers and others have been quick to raise questions about wider implications for mobility and urban environments and responsible development of the technology. In a discussion that has been dominated by science, engineering and narrow questions of ethics, there is a need to dra…
Socially-distanced science: How British publics were imagined, modelled and marginalised in political and expert responses to the Covid-19 pandemic
In early 2021, the United Kingdom (UK) had the highest per capita death rate from Covid-19 of any large country. Yet it had previously been ranked as one of the best prepared countries for a future pandemic. This gap between preparedness and performance has been the subject of intense debate, including as part of the UK Covid-19 Inquiry. In this paper, we contribute to this ongoing process of reflection by identifying the imagined public(s) withi…
Public anticipations of self-driving vehicles in the UK and US
Developers of self-driving vehicles (SDVs) work with a particular idea of a possible and desirable future. Members of the public may not share the assumptions on which this is based. In this paper we analyse freetext responses from surveys of UK (n 4,860) and US (n 1,890) publics, which ask respondents what springs to mind when they think of SDVs, and why they should or should not be developed. Responses (averaging a total 27 words per participan…
Political science (15 works) · Engineering (10 works) · Law (10 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · Politics (7 works) · Public relations (7 works) · Climate Change Communication and Perception (6 works) · Economics (6 works) · Psychology (6 works)