NATS 1760 Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: Framework Programmes For Research And Technological Development, Technological Determinism, Ak-47
5 Jan 2016
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Document Summary
The study of technology needs to be approached from a socio-technical viewpoint: technology is not a stand-alone object. Technology and innovation are closely interwoven with economics and hence have consequences for our understanding of inequality: links to an ideology of efficiency. Social change results inevitably from technological developments: technology and society is linked, the socio-technical approach. Early conceptualizations tended to focus on technology as material substance, disregarding the social. The socio-technical approach argues that the social and technological are closely interwoven. It does not explicitly delineate a select set of variables that need to be examined ex; latour"s humans and non-human: the approach does not state which mechanisms underlie the relationship between technology and society (economic, technical, psychological, etc) Is it strictly economic: little detail is provided as to how this approach should uncover mechanisms underlying the mutual shaping process (a question of method, technological inequality.
