Technology and society are inextricably interwoven. This is particularly evident in our day and age, when almost all areas of our lives are embedded in so-called socio-technical systems. While such systems, which have evolved over decades, help us to meet societal needs, they are also at the root of the numerous social and environmental challenges that characterize our time. This is leading to a growing societal consensus on the need to transform existing systems into more sustainable configurations.
However, the socio-technical transition processes associated with such a transformation are always processes of "creative destruction": existing structures have to be broken up, traditional patterns of behavior have to be questioned. Understandably, this leads to uncertainties, fears and tensions - at the individual level as well as at the level of organizations. Against this background, the provision of future-related orientation knowledge can serve as an important basis for decision-making and enable a sustainable-resilient design of technology and social coexistence.
The creation of such future-oriented orientation knowledge requires a synthesis of different fields and forms of knowledge that cannot be covered by a single university. Therefore, the Graz University of Technology and University of Graz have jointly established the inter-university research platform Zukunft – Technik – Gesellschaft (Z-T-G), which roughly translates into Future – Technology – Society. This platform is intended to enable and stabilize cooperation between researchers from both universities. Besides the creation of orientation knowledge for decision makers on different levels, an ethical frame of reference for thinking, discussing and acting, which reaches beyond science and technology and into the social discussion and design practice, is aimed at.
