<TITLE: Torus/Ester Conference: On the Scenes of Science 1
ACADEMIC DOMAIN: humanities
DISCIPLINE: history of science & technology
EVENT TYPE: conference presentation
FILE ID: CPRE03D
NOTES: continuation of CDIS03A, session also includes presentations CPRE03A-C/E (CDIS03B and CPRE03E are part of the same conference), recording incomplete

RECORDING DURATION: 15 min 37 sec

RECORDING DATE: 14.11.2003

NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS: unknown

NUMBER OF SPEAKERS: 1

S12: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: Finnish; ACADEMIC ROLE: senior staff; GENDER: male; AGE: 31-50

SS: several simultaneous speakers>


<S12> oh welcome er thank you er sorry i'm late er we had financial discussions with director of human research that's the single most important event the whole year so , so i couldn't come earlier <PREPARING POWERPOINT> the erm technology works . does it . well now <P:14> <FINISH PREPARING POWERPOINT> okay er <COUGH> this is not a part of the story <SS> @@ </SS> , and er , yes er what i'm gonna talk about today is er is something that i've been , thinking for past ten years er what <NAME S19> was saying is i've been writing about , technological institutions technological R&D innovation systems engineers and er , and er things like that so er what actually has come up is that <P:20> er . i have sort of experienced or trying to sort of build up a a kind of a new thinking about cultural construction , of technology you all know or at least most of you know about the most widely cited , method of history of technology sociology of technology which is social construction of technology and er i was part of the research team er conducted by tom hughes in the US back in late er 80s , during which the social construction , was er introduced , (xx) <COUGH> rather few controversies about how technology is constructed <COUGH> social constructivist methods sort of swept through the field and er there has been a lot of criticism rewriting rethinking about the concepts but regardless of that sort of social constructive idea has er prevailed and it seems to grow strong with the very recent er readings , <SIGH> (are) something that we can believe however er , this past month ago i was in atlanta where social er society for historians of technology had their annual meeting er what came up was a a kind of a new way of thinking , how technology's constructed and it's not no or no more , merely social factors that shape technology there seems to be a kind of a , rather concepts let's say er emotions representations ethnicity nationality those concepts came out very strongly and once you gotta put them side by side with the social constructivist , er concepts which emphasised the social groups er social forces economic forces and also sort of ideological or political forces saving technology so you get kind of an interesting new way of looking at this this whole problem what shapes technology and er so when i came back and er i started to sort of thinking this more closely and i've put it into this context what i've been studying in finland and this what i'm gonna talk about today is a kind of a just a an experiment it's nothing more you can argue against it and er may maybe it's not likeable , okay er <COUGH> what i'm er trying to say is that SCOT is a social construction of technology these are sort of the main methodological thoughts er and the criticism first of all that has been said about SCOT is that there's a , sort of a limits of the structural analysis , in other words what social constructivists were saying that , technology in a process of innovation it's shaped by different social forces , might be engineers customers end-users legislation and these all together shape technology the way it is for example this piece of technology should be shaped by all these forces and as historians and sociologists we should sort of we could be able to go back take this piece of technology and at the end of the day who we find is this social forces and their thinking er the problem with this kind of analysis was that who are the relevant social groups , what was found in number of case studies that the number of of relevant social groups exceeded the comprehensible level almost everyone would declare to be heart of the this construction let's take the er mobile telephone and you might just you know think about how many different social groups influenced the construction of that piece of technology , so it's a clever way of of thinking how technology is constructed but once (you just) go back to the the research ag- agenda and try to sort of build up you end up in this this massive amount of different kinds of social groups and the limits of of this analysis who is actually doing what , okay the other criticism that comes out of the the recent writing is about the outdated political agenda social constructivist methods were born from the six seven 60s 70s and early 80s kind of the critical movement against technological enthusiasm so it was the idea that technology approaches er or changes according to sort of the timeless laws so the social constructivists took it back and put it in the into the sort of the social historical context sort of taking let's say taking technology from engineers and , placing it in this rather social context and there was a clear political agenda , arguing that it's not elitist engineering groups that design technology but it's it's kind of a social phenomenon all together now when the world has changed soviet union has collapsed socialism has been driven into this er crisis we all can see that this kind of th- political agenda is kind of outdated , we're talking about technologies are that are constructed globally , without s- strict kind of the european political agendas okay the third criticism comes from the limits of the narrative er analysis in other words once sociologists are writing social construction of technology they , must eliminate or ignore the narratives by these people who actually are doing technology , so sociologists in in fact become engineers they tell engineers how technology was shaped and engineers then help us and say well i don't think so <SS> @@ </SS> but because sociologists and historians especially social historians know better , that is the way technology is shaped i think <NAME> was in this one meeting where the this one old engineer , had a comment that he said you know , every time he flies the plane he rather flies the plane which is designed by an engineer than a sociologist <SS> @@ </SS> , you know which is a @kind of a@ just er tells you about this kind of a academic battle that goes a lot who ah or who owns technology , okay so er once we have this limited narrative analysis , er now once we take it in the broader context we don't find this western rational thinking anymore once we move beyond european and american context we start getting this kind of irrational way of of seeing technology so i've been building this a new horrible word which is S-A-C-C-O-T @@ <COUGH> it's very unofficial and and it's not widely known this is probably the first time it's been ever shown in a wider public except my own study er which is a social and cultural construction of technology but i'm i'm not proposing that we should overthrow social construction but , have this and something new which is cultural factors shaping er technology once we sort of combine if we are able to combine which is unsecure and and i don't know if it's if it's possible to do would be much more exciting than having only this social way of of looking at this construction , and er i have listed three different ways of of of looking it if we , use this S-A SACCOT's met- method we are actually looking at undefined cultural analysis which makes the whole construction of technology er exciting adventure which don't know how technology is born , and i have interviewed hundreds of engineers and they don't know , how any piece of technology is actually born they have their blueprints they have their teams they have everything but still the outcome is in number of ways a big surprise for them so there must be kind of a cultural environment in which this whole thing takes place , the second one is er unlimited political agenda we can use all kinds of political agendas describing technological change not only western rational , er political agenda , so we sort of open up the the the gates for a a much much bigger er geographical area , we can include ethnic local global cultures in all they or in some in some ways shape technological change , the power of narrative take the whole thing back in the na- kind of a narrative , which is the interaction of mind space time (xx) so if we can actually write the construction of technology using these kinds of elements that's at least my my ar- argument is that we get much closer to the actual process of creating technology now you might think what has this to do with the history or sociology (which can take us) back to the er foundation of a historical analysis this is what historians had done with the er military men politicians societies this is kind of a same process now we're only looking at technology which is of course er kind of an alien object for many historians but if you look around this room how much technology you see there's much more technology in this room than th- than human beings , and we are in constant interaction with technology so it is about time for historians to look technology as a one of the prime movers of social cultural change and we need some tools to analyse it and it's clear that the kind of the old fashion historical methods don't take us too far so this is just one er little experiments of of doing this , okay er how do i er ar- arguments argue this is that what i have studied national innovations and they are indeed national . so if they are national they must have this , cultural and local reference in them , it's kind of interesting because today it's rather difficult , to to figure out what is national in in in any technology i'm driving american car which is built in germany , but , let's think about less 25 30 years back then the whole world was much more interesting you can buy a russian car or soviet car which is definitely a soviet car , or you can actually move to DDR and line up for three years to buy a trabant , for them it's a </S12>
