[CITASA] Take two-Will the real sociology of technologies stand up?

[Steve Sawyer]

I'm responding to Andrea's questions and building on Jeremy's at times, 
below.  Steve

jeremy hunsinger wrote:
>>
>> So, I pose a few questions back to the list...
>>
>> 1.  Is the sociology of technology an umbrella term? discipline? That 
>> others
>> fit inside? If so, what fits inside?
>
> sociology is the discipline, technology is the field, many other 
> disciplines, interdisciplinary areas, take technology as a field.   so 
> we have a simple venn diagram of two circles with 'sociology of 
> technology' as the overlap.
I'd argue that the sociology of technology is a perspective, a way of 
seeing -- much as Andrea laid out. There are few firm boundaries in this 
space. You can "be" a sociologist by paying dues. You may read every 
work written in every sociology outlet yet never take on the 
perspective.  Similarly you can join one of the number of technology 
societies and "be" a technologist and you can read but never take on the 
perspective.  As a perspective, it has attributes that distinguish it, 
but there is no orthogonality test.

I've always looked to sociologists of technology for insights into the 
structural aspects of design and uses, and for insights that more 
agentic perspectives (such as HCI/psychology, economics or information 
science) cannot offer. 

As an aside, these other perspectives have been much more visible in the 
intellectual spaces that I find myself in.
>>
>>
>> 2.  If the sociology of technology is just sociology applied to 
>> technical
>> things--then does the sociology of technology offer anything that 
>> overall
>> sociology doesn't in terms of theories/methods/etc.?
>
Here I profess to an abiding interest in information and communication 
technologies, acknowledging that these are types of a broader concept. 
Framed this way, sociologists of technology have lots of opportunity to 
argue for collective technological action (and deferring to the 
brilliant work of Castells can't  sustain this line of possible 
inquiry).  Saskia Sassen's piece on this is a wonderful addition.
> the problem here is that... there are very few non-technical things in 
> fact, looking around southern virginia, a fairly rural area, i see 
> virtually nothing that does not fit into the regimes of technology, 
> even the nature is 'produced', 'managed', 'designed' etc.
>
> In terms of different methods, I think that like all specializations, 
> there is a tendency of the smaller group to accept the validity of 
> different methods.  I wouldn't call 'actor-network theory' a method, 
> but I would call much of sociologist John Law's books methodological, 
> and some sociologists of technology might be working within a set of 
> theories and methods that are not recognized outside.  As an sts'er, i 
> recently sent a piece in that left the editor 'befuddled' 'perhaps 
> disciplinary clash'... They were in comm, weren't really paying much 
> attention to current debates in philosophy of social science, weak 
> ontologies, and related matters, so the text was lost to them.   Small 
> fields, specialization, might have things in them that they debate 
> about, that aren't recognized by the larger fields.  One topic that is 
> becoming somewhat big in 'sociology of technology' is 'thing theory', 
> which spun out of questions of materiality and objects in society, I 
> saw a blog post with 5 or 6 syllabi titled 'thing theory' being 
> taught, not all were sociology of technology courses, but all had some 
> sociology of technology readings.
>
>>
>>
>> 3.  One author suggested that the sociology of technology exists only 
>> in the
>> overlap of other things. I think this is an intriguing idea. Do you 
>> think it
>> hold water?
>>
Nope. Overlap spaces are often transient, sociology is not. As an aside, 
technology is not transient, its forms may be.  Theorizing on the 
sociological nature of technology is useful, describing passing 
technologies in sociological terms is of passing use.
>> 4.  Imagine that you found yourself on a six person team. The other 
>> members
>> of the team were an HCI (human-computer interaction) scholar, a 
>> scholar of
>> communications, an STS (science and technology studies) scholar, a
>> sociologist of science/knowledge, and a philosopher of technology. 
>> After a
>> few beers and some good pizza they all look at you and ask you what 
>> you add
>> to the team that they don't already have.
>
 From the HCI person I'd want to hear their thoughts on design aspects 
of the technology and I'd argue with their more agentic insights.  From 
the philosopher I'd want to hear how the could contribute to the debates 
I'd have with the comm. scholar and the HCI scholar on the structural v. 
agentic nature of computing.  I'd debate the material nature of 
technology with the STS scholar, and the differences between knowledge 
and technology with the SKAT scholar.  I'd expect to mediate among all 
of them regarding how to approach the multi-method research project we 
would do together.


> don't think this is a valid question.  the reason is that each of 
> these people could be in a subfield in the discipline / 
> interdisciplinary area that pretty much makes them unable to work 
> together.  I can easily imagine an hci person working on ubiqitous 
> computing, a communications scholar working on interpersonal 
> dialogues, an sts scholar working on nanotechnological ethics, 
> sociologist of science mapping scientific conflicts, a philosopher of 
> technology concerned with biological engineering.   they might have 
> nothing in common at all.  (I've been in such crowds, the weather is a 
> popular topic...)
>
> If we grant the possibility that they are all working on web 2.0, then 
> they might have a conversation.  The question then becomes for me, 
> what does the sociologist of technology do.... here i would suspect 
> they would bring a stronger sense of separation between the social and 
> the technology than say the STS scholar, and more of a concern for the 
> 'things' or 'objects' in the world than the sociologist of knowledge.  
> For the rest, the spectrums are too huge to posit a possibility.  I 
> know of several hci scholars who are indistinguishable from 
> philosopher's of technology, except for where they publish, similar 
> communications is a 'field' that has somehow become a discipline, and 
> some of them are sociologists of technology, etc.
>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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