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Short abstract:

In this paper, we aim to explicate the kind of understanding that enables non-technical experts to engage in critical thinking about a new technology, shedding light on the epistemic requirements for meaningful discussion in the ELSPI domain.

Long abstract:

Stakeholder engagement and participation, preferably upstream, is seen as a cornerstone of approaches to responsible technological innovation (e.g. Stilgoe, Owen, & MacNaghten, 2013; Coenen & Grunwald, 2017). This especially goes for disruptive technologies, that is: technologies that have the potential to profoundly change the status quo (De Jong, 2022). Engaging in critical thinking about new technology and its potential effects are, however, epistemically conditioned: In order to start thinking one must know what to think about. For that reason, calls for the importance of stakeholder inclusion and public debate in the context of quantum technology innovation are accompanied by calls for making these technologies understandable to a broader audience (Vermaas, 2017; Coenen et al., 2022; Seskir et al., 2023). This idea, that some degree of understanding of a technology is necessary to engage in a meaningful debate about it, echoes in policy (advisory) documents about quantum technologies (e.g. Rathenau, 2023: 3; Nationale Agenda Quantum Technologie, 2019: 40).

Notwithstanding the plausibility of the claim that thinking about (the impact of) a technology requires some degree of understanding of this technology, it is unclear what (a sufficient) ‘understanding of a technology’ means. In this paper we aim to explicate what kind or degree of 'understanding' enables critical thinking about a technology. We do so by building on the notion of 'technological understanding' (De Jong & De Haro, forthcoming), i.e. the kind of understanding that is involved in designing technological artefacts. From this expert notion, we derive a 'public' notion of technological understanding.