Sociology Of Technology (Science And Technology Studies)

Objectos, Poder e Oculto – sobre a experiência do ecrã

by Pedro Mendonça

in Comunicação e Sociedade (2010), nº 16, pp. 51-66

Constructing the Trans-Israel Highway's Inevitability

by Yaakov Garb

This essay describes the construction of inevitability in megaprojects. In order to move forward from being a... more This essay describes the construction of inevitability in megaprojects. In order to move forward from being a contested notion, one among many, a megaproject must grow and be stabilized within the awareness of different professional, decision-maker, and public groups, and, ultimately, overwhelm the space of possibilities. This sense of inevitability is one of the most valuable achievements for project proponents; undermining it, the crux of opponents' efforts.

In this essay, I describe the rhetorical strategies used by proponents of the 300 kilometer Trans-Israel Highway to make their project seem inevitable. These included the following:

1. Shaping and proliferating a problem definition (in this case, perceived congestion and an alleged "lag in road infrastructure") that pointed inescapably to the proposed project as solution.

2. Rewriting and telling the project's history as one of the inevitable unfolding and gathering momentum of a single long-established plan. This post-hoc account masks the project's halting, opportunistic, contested, and haphazard trajectory, its mutating nature, and the willful efforts necessary to propel it forward in the face of opposition.

3. A concerted effort to close debate onto issues internal to the project itself. Thus project proponents strove to limit discussion to issues such as the Highway's staging, costs, routing, etc., and exclude from debate any discussion of--and spokespeople for--issues outside this project "box," especially those that might have raised questions about the need for the box itself.

4. Attempts to bring the future forward, into the present: to achieve or present as already achieved, components of the project prior to its approval. These prefigurative "facts on the ground" symbolically and materially blur the contingency of project approval and preempt alternatives.

Together, these discursive-political ploys drew on and reworked the past, present and future so as to narrow the space of possibilities to a single outcome: the proposed project. These ploys are by no means unique to the Trans-Israel project; they are, I propose, regular accompaniments to any large project. Nor are they limited to "bad" projects; all the maneuvers described, with the possible exception of some aspects of item 3, are regular, perhaps legitimate features of the emergence of large projects. The observations below are thus offered both for their theoretical insight into the polito-rhetorical processes through which large projects are forwarded, and as a practical aid to those who wish to question and reverse the seeming inevitability of bad ones.

The Exchange and Diffusion of Innovations: A Review of Major Themes in the Literature

by Carl L Bankston

“AN ORIGINAL PROTEST, AT LEAST”. MEDIALITY AND PARTICIPATION

by Amparo Lasén

co-authored with Iñaki Martínez de Albéniz, published in 2011 cultures of participation. media practices, politics and literacy, peter lang/

New media take part in the configuration of a particular form of political participation: mobilisations and collective... more New media take part in the configuration of a particular form of political participation: mobilisations and collective action. Contemporary social movements not only resort to ICTs, such as mobile phones and the Internet, in order to increase efficacy and efficiency. ICTs are not mere tools for mobilisations, whose fundamental objectives and strategies would remain the same. Therefore, our hypothesis differs from the concept of smart mobs coined by Howard Rheingold [26]. This notion defines those social movements, which strategically have deployed an intelligent use of technology with divers conventional political aims: from overthrowing the government to the modification of some particular politic. Our hypothesis is that technological mediations entail the possibility of radical transformations in the ways of understanding political action and mobilisation. Moreover, these technologies can be understood as another political agent and not a mere tool for a political action. Drawing from divers empirical examples of mobilisations organised through the mediation of mobile telephony and web sites, it will be argued that fleeting mobs, the so-called flash-mobs, are a counter-example of smart-mobs. They are forms of shared political agency between people and technologies, the mobilisation, the collective action, being an end in itself rather than a mean for obtaining other aims. This is a form of contemporary political participation centred in the gathering itself, in acting together with other people, in being present in public spaces.

Digital Photography and Picture Sharing: Redefining the Public/Private Divide

by Amparo Lasén

Co-authored with Edgar Gómez, published in 2009 Knowledge, Technology & Policy, 2 (3): 205- 215

Digital photography is contributing to the
renegotiation of the public and private divide and to
the... more Digital photography is contributing to the
renegotiation of the public and private divide and to
the transformation of privacy and intimacy, especially
with the convergence of digital cameras, mobile
phones, and web sites. This convergence contributes
to the redefinition of public and private and to the
transformation of their boundaries, which have al-
ways been subject to historical and geographical
change. Taking pictures or filming videos of strangers
in public places and showing them in webs like Flickr
or YouTube, or making self-portraits available to
strangers in instant messenger, social network sites, or
photo blogs are becoming a current practice for a
growing number of Internet users. Both are examples
of the intertwining of online and offline practices,
experiences, and meanings that challenge the traditional
concepts of the public and the private. Uses of digital
images play a role in the way people perform being a
stranger and in the way they relate to strangers, online
and offline. The mere claims about the privatization of
the public space or the public disclosure of intimacy do
not account for all these practices, situations, and
attitudes, as they are not a simple translation of
behaviors and codes from one realm to the other.