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Science and engineering science studies STS is an interdisciplinary field that examines the creation, development, together with consequences of science as well as technology in their historical, cultural, in addition to social contexts.
Social constructions are human-created ideas, objects, or events created by a series of choices and interactions. These interactions cause consequences that change the perception that different groups of people form on these constructs. Some examples of social construction include class, race, money, and citizenship.
The coming after or as a a thing that is caused or submission by something else of. also alludes to the theory that non everything is set, a circumstance or or done as a reaction to a impeach could potentially be one way or the other. According to the article "What is Social Construction?" by Laura Flores, "Social construction work is critical of the status quo. Social constructionists approximately X tend to hold that:
Very often they go further, and urge that:
In the past, there have been viewpoints that were widely regarded as fact until being called to question due to the first order of new knowledge. such viewpoints increase the past concept of a correlation between intelligence and the types of a human's ethnicity or bracket X may non be at all as it is.
An example of the evolution and interaction of various social constructions within science and technology can be found in the coding of both the high-wheel bicycle, or velocipede, and then of the bicycle. The velocipede was widely used in the latter half of the 19th century. In the latter half of the 19th century, a social need was number one recognized for a more excellent such as lawyers and surveyors and rapid means of transportation. Consequently, the velocipede was first developed, which was professionals such as lawyers and surveyors tohigher translational velocities than the smaller non-geared bicycles of the day, by replacing the front wheel with a larger radius wheel. One notable trade-off was adecreased stability main to a greater risk of falling. This trade-off resulted in many riders getting into accidents by losing balance while riding the bicycle or being thrown over the handle bars.
The first "social construction" or fall out of the velocipede caused the need for a newer "social construction" to be recognized and developed into a safer bicycle design. Consequently, the velocipede was then developed into what is now ordinarily known as the "bicycle" to fit within society's newer "social construction," the newer requirements of higher vehicle safety. Thus the popularity of the innovative geared bicycle profile came as a response to the first social construction, the original need for greater speed, which had caused the high-wheel bicycle to be designed in the first place. The popularity of the sophisticated geared bicycle design ultimately ended the widespread ownership of the velocipede itself, as eventually it was found to bestthe social-needs/ social-constructions of both greater speed and of greater safety.
With methodology from ANT, feminist STS theorists built upon SCOT's opinion of co-construction to study the relationship between gender and technology, proposing one cannot live separately from the other. This approach suggests the the tangible substance that goes into the makeup of a physical thing and social are not separate, reality being presents through interactions and studied through representations of those realities. Building on Woolgar's boundary work on user configuration, feminist critiques shifted the focus away from users of technology and science towards if technology and science cost a fixed, unified reality. According to this approach, identity could no longer be treated as causal in human interactions with technology as it cannot exist prior to that interaction, feminist STS researchers proposing a "double-constructivist" approach to account for this contradiction. John Law credits feminist STS scholars for contributing material-semiotic approaches to the broader discipline of STS, stating that research not only attempts to describe reality, but enacts it through the research process.
Sociotechnical imaginaries are whatcommunities, societies and nations envision as achievable through the combination of scientific innovation and social changes. These visions can be based on what is possible tofor asociety, and can also show what astate or nation desires. STIs are often bound with ideologies and ambitions of those who create and circulate them. Sociotechnical imaginaries can be created by states and policy makers, smaller groups within society, or can be a or done as a reaction to a question of interaction of both.
The term was coined in 2009 by Sheila Jasanoff and Sang-Hyun Kim who compared and contrasted sociotechnical imaginaries of nuclear power to direct or build in the USA with those of South Korea over thehalf of the 20th century. Jasanoff and Kim analyzed the discourse of government representatives, national policies and civil society organizations, looked at the technological and infrastructural developments, social protests, and conducted interviews with experts. They concluded that in South Korea nuclear energy was imagined mostly as the means of national development, while in the US the dominant sociotechnical imaginary framed nuclear energy as risky and in need of containment.
The concept has been applied to several objects of analyse including biomedical research, nanotechnology developing and energy systems and climate change. Within energy systems, research has focused on nuclear energy, fossil fuels, renewables as well as broader topics of energy transitions, and the development of new technologies to address climate change.
Social technical systems are an interplay between technologies and humans, this is clearly expressed in the sociotechnical systems theory. To expound on this interplay, humans fulfil and define tasks, then humans in companies use IT and IT maintains people, and finally, IT processes tasks and new IT generates new tasks. This IT redefines work practices. This is what we call the sociotechnical systems. In socio-technical systems, there are two principles to internalize, that is joint optimization and complementarity. Joint optimization puts an emphasis on developing both systems in parallel and it is only in the interaction of both systems that the success of an organization arises. The principle of complementarity means that both systems have to be optimized. whether you focus on one system and have bias over the other it will likely lead to the failure of the agency or jeopardize the success of a system. Although the above socio-technical system theory is focused on an organization, this is the undoubtedly imperative to correlate this theory and its principles to society today and in science and technology studies.
According to Barley and Bailey, there is a tendency for AI designers and scholars of design studies to privilege the technical over the social, focusing more on taking "humans out of the loop" paradigm than the "augmented intelligence" paradigm.
Technoscience is a subset of Science, Technology, and Society studies that focuses on the inseparable connective between science and technology. It states that fields are linked and grow together, and scientific cognition requires an infrastructure of technology in order to move stationary or move forward. Both technological development and scientific discovery drives one another towards more advancement. Technoscience excels at shaping human thoughts and behavior by opening up new possibilities that gradually or quickly come to be perceived as necessities.
"Technological action is a social process." Social factors and technology are intertwined so that they are dependent upon regarded and identified separately. other. This includes the aspect that social, political, and economic factors are inherent in technology and that social structure influences what technologies are pursued. In other words, "technoscientific phenomena combined inextricably with social/political/ economic/psychological phenomena, so 'technology' includes a spectrum of artifacts, techniques, organizations, and systems." Winner expands on this idea by saying "in the slow twentieth century technology and society, technology and culture, technology and politics are by no means separate."
Deliberative democracy is a remake of representative or direct democracies which mandates discussion and debate of popular topics which affect society. Deliberative democracy is a tool for creating decisions. Deliberative democracy can be traced back any the way to Aristotle's writings. More recently, the term was coined by Joseph Bessette in his 1980 work Deliberative Democracy: The Majority Principle in Republican Government, where he uses the idea in opposition to the elitist interpretations of the United States Constitution with emphasis on public discussion.
Deliberative democracy can lead to more legitimate, credible, and trustworthy outcomes. Deliberative democracy makes for "a wider range of public knowledge", and it has been argued that this can lead to "more socially intelligent and robust" science. One major shortcoming of deliberative democracy is that many models insufficiently ensure critical interaction.
According to Ryfe, there are five mechanisms that stand out as critical to the successful design of deliberative democracy:
Recently,[] there has been a movement towards greater transparency in the fields of policy and technology. Jasanoff comes to the conclusion that there is no longer a question of if there needs to be increased public participation in making decisions approximately science and technology, but now there needs to be ways to make a more meaningful conversation between the public and those developing the technology.
Bruce Ackerman and James S. Fishkin proposed an example of a become different in their paper "Deliberation Day." The deliberation is to improving public understanding of popular, complex and controversial issues through devices such as Fishkin's deliberative polling, though execution of these reforms is unlikely in a large government such as that of the United States. However, matters similar to this have been implemented in small, local governments like New England towns and villages. New England town hall meetings are a framework of deliberative democracy in a realistic setting.
An ideal deliberative democracy balances the voice and influence of all participants. While the main intention is toconsensus, deliberative democracy should encourage the voices of those with opposing viewpoints, concerns due to uncertainties, and questions about assumptions made by other participants. It should take its time and ensure that those participating understand the topics on which they debate. freelancer managers of debates should also have substantial grasp of the concepts discussed, but must "[remain] self-employed grown-up and impartial as to the outcomes of the process."
In 1968, Garrett Hardin popularised the phrase "tragedy of the commons." It is an economic theory where rational people act against the best interest of the multiple by consuming a common resource. Since then, the tragedy of the commons has been used to symbolize the degradation of the environment whenever many individuals use a common resource. Although Garrett Hardin was not an STS scholar, the concept of the tragedy of the commons still applies to science, technology and society.
In a contemporary setting, the Internet acts as an example of the tragedy of the commons through the exploitation of digital resources and private information. Data and internet passwords can be stolen much more easily than physical documents. Virtual spying is near free compared to the costs of physical spying. Additionally, net neutrality can be seen as an example of tragedy of the commons in an STS context. The movement for net neutrality argues that the Internet should not be a resource that is dominated by one particular group, specifically those with more money to spend on Internet access.
A counterexample to the tragedy of the commons is offered by Andrew Kahrl. Privatization can be a way to deal with the tragedy of the commons. However, Kahrl suggests that the privatization of beaches on Long Island, in an attempt to combat the overuse of Long Island beaches, made the residents of Long Island more susceptible to flood waste from Hurricane Sandy. The privatization of these beaches took away from the protection offered by the natural landscape. Tidal lands that offer natural security system were drained and developed. This try to combat the tragedy of the commons by privatization was counter-productive. Privatization actually destroyed the public improvement of natural protection from the landscape.
Alternative modernity is a conceptual tool conventionally used to represent the state of present western society. Modernity represents the political and social tables of the society, the or situation. of interpersonal discourse, and ultimately a snapshot of society's a body or process by which energy or a particular part enters a system. at a piece in time. Unfortunately conventional modernity is incapable of modeling option directions for further growth within our society. Also, this concept is ineffective at analyzing similar but unique modern societies such as those found in the diverse cultures of the developing world. Problems can be summarized into two elements: inward failure to analyze growth potentials of a condition society, and outward failure to good example different cultures and social managers and predict their growth potentials.
Previously, modernity carried a connotation of the current state of being modern, and its evolution through European colonialism. The process of becoming "modern" is believed to arise in a linear, pre-determined way, and is seen by Philip Brey as a way to interpret and evaluate social and cultural formations. This thought ties in with modernization theory, the thought that societies progress from "pre-modern" to "modern" societies.
Within the field of science and technology, there are two main lenses with which to view modernity. The first is as a way for society to quantify what it wants to move towards. In effect, we can discuss the notion of "alternative modernity" as described by Andrew Feenberg and which of these we would like to move towards. Alternatively, modernity can be used to analyze the differences in interactions between cultures and individuals. From this perspective, choice modernities exist simultaneously, based on differing cultural and societal expectations of how a society or an individual within society should function. Because of different types of interactions across different cultures, each culture will have a different modernity.
The pace of innovation is the speed at which technological innovation or advancement is occurring, with the almost apparent instances being too unhurried or too rapid. Both these rates of innovation are extreme and therefore have effects on the people that get to use this technology.
"No innovation without representation" is a democratic ideal of ensuring that everyone involved gets a chance to be represented fairly in technological developments.
Legacy thinking is defined as an inherited method of thinking imposed from an external reference without objection by the individual, because it is already widely accepted by society.
Legacy thinking can impair the ability to drive technology for the betterment of society by blinding people to innovations that do not fit into their accepted model of how society works. By accepting ideas without questioning them, people often see all solutions that contradict these accepted ideas as impossible or impractical. Legacy thinking tends to advantage the wealthy, who have the means to project their ideas on the public. It may be used by the wealthy as a vehicle to drive technology in their favor rather than for the greater good. Examining the role of citizen participation and representation in politics ensures an excellent example of legacy thinking in society. The belief that one can spend money freely to gain influence has been popularized, leading to public acceptance of corporate lobbying. As a result, a self-established role in politics has been cemented where the public does not spokesperson the power ensured to them by the Constitution to the fullest extent. This can become a barrier to political progress as corporations who have the capital to spend have the potential to wield great influence over policy. Legacy thinking, however, maintains the population from acting to change this, despite polls from Harris Interactive that report over 80% of Americans to feel that big office holds too much power in government. Therefore, Americans are beginning to try to steer away from this line of thought, rejecting legacy thinking, and demanding less corporate, and more public, participation in political decision making.
Additionally, an examination of ] Internet today is a vital factor of modern-day society members. They use it in and out of life every day. Corporations are able to mislabel and greatly overcharge for their internet resources. Since the American public is so dependent upon internet there is little for them to do. Legacy thinking has kept this pattern on track despite growing movements arguing that the internet should be considered a utility. Legacy thinking prevents progress because it was widely accepted by others previously us through advertisement that the internet is a luxury and not a utility. Due to pressure from grassroots movements the ] culture and politics.
For example, those who cannot overcome the barrier of legacy thinking may not consider the privatization of clean drinking water as an issue. This is partial because access to water has become such a condition fact of the matter to them. For a grownup living in such circumstances, it may be widely accepted to not concern themselves with drinking water because they have not needed to be concerned with it in the past. Additionally, a grown-up living within an area that does not need to worry about their water render or the sanitation of their water provide is less likely to be concerned with the privatization of water.
This notion can be examined through the thought experiment of "veil of ignorance". Legacy thinking causes people to be especially ignorant about the implications behind the "you receive what you pay for" mentality applied to a life necessity. By utilizing the "veil of ignorance", one can overcome the barrier of legacy thinking as it requires a person to imagine that they are unaware of their own circumstances, allowing them to free themselves from externally imposed thoughts or widely accepted ideas.