The Historiography of Engineering Contexts Andrew Jamison Aalborg University

Based on: Mikael Hård and Andrew Jamison, Hubris and Hybrids. A Cultural History of Technology and Science (Routledge 2005)

By way of introduction... “A good technology, firmly related to human needs, cannot be one that has a maximum productivity as its supreme goal: it must rather, as in an organic system, seek to provide the right quantity of the right quality at the right time and the right place for the right purpose.” Lewis Mumford, 1961

The Meanings of Engineering meaning economic, commercial social, professional cultural, human relevant contexts companies, corporations, markets cities, nation-states, societies movements, communities, cultures story-line innovationconstructionappropriation forms of contextual knowledge innovation studies, economic and market analysis science and technology studies, sociology and philosophy of science and technology cultural studies, history of science and technology, technology assessment

The Story-line of Economic Innovation also known as ”technological determinism”: changes in technology cause changes in society Steam engines and textile machines give us industrial society Automobiles and telephones give us modern society Television and computers give us information society Atomic energy and genetic engineering give us risk society The internet and cell phones give us network society

The Story-Line of Social Construction Actors create networks to make technological artifacts that satisfy social interests, or needs An interest in mobility and individual freedom leads to the bicycle and the automobile An interest in protecting non-human ”nature” leads to technologies of environmental control An interest in exploring ”virtual” reality leads to an enhancement of human experience

The Story-line of Cultural Appropriation The meanings of technologies come with use, and they are usually mixed, or ambivalent Using machines in factories transforms the meaning of society and economy, but also destroys pre-industrial forms Using automobiles and airplanes transforms the meaning of reality, but also destroys the natural environment Using bio- and nanotechnologies transforms the meaning of life, but also challenges traditional values and ways of life

The Broader Context: Changing ”Modes” of Knowledge Production Industrial Military Commercial “Little Science” “Big Science” “Technoscience” Mode 1 Mode 1½ Mode 2 Before WWII1940s-1970s 1980s- Form of Knowledge disciplinarymultidisciplinary transdisciplinary Organiza- individuals and R&D departments ad hoc projects and tional form research groups and institutes networks Dominant values academic bureaucratic entrepreneurial

From Little Science to Big Science change in size and scale mission orientation, external control university-government collaboration bureaucratic norm, or value system new role for the state: ”science policy” appropriate technology/technology assessment

Critiques of Big Science in the 60s moral, or spiritual (e.g. Martin Luther King) against injustice, ”poverty of the spirit” for a new morality scientific, or ecological (e.g. Rachel Carson) against reductionism, ”the abuse of the planet” for an environmental science humanist, or cultural (e.g. Herbert Marcuse) against hubris, ”one-dimensional man” for a liberatory technology

The Moral Critique ”When we look at modern man, we have to face the fact that modern man suffers from a kind of poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to his scientific and technological abundance. We’ve learned to fly the air like birds, we’ve learned to swim the seas like fish, but we haven’t learned to walk the earth like brothers and sisters.” Martin Luther King, Jr

The Ecological Critique ”The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway om which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster.” Rachel Carson

“Technology has become the great vehicle of reification – reification in its most mature and effective form. The social position of the individual and his relation to others appear not only to be determined by objective qualities and laws, but these qualities and laws seem to lose their mysterious and uncontrollable character; they appear as calculable manifestations of (scientific) rationality.” Herbert Marcuse The Humanist Critique

Nordic Folkcenter for Renewable Energy An Appropriate Technology Movement in the 1970s The New Alchemy Institute Ark

From Big Science to Technoscience change in range and scope market orientation, corporate control university-industry collaboration entrepreneurial norm, or value system the state as strategist: innovation policy from assessment to promotion: ”foresight”

An Age of Technoscience A blurring of discursive boundaries between science (episteme) and engineering (techne) A trespassing of institutional borders between public and private, economic and academic A mixing of skills and competencies across disciplines and societal domains

Contending Strategies of Knowledge Making The dominant, or hegemonic strategy (mode 2): commercialization, entrepreneurship, transdisciplinarity The residual, or traditionalist strategy (mode 1): academicization, expertise, (multi)disciplinarity An emerging, or sustainable strategy (mode 3): appropriation, empowerment, interdisciplinarity

Transdisciplinarity, or ”mode 2” ”Knowledge which emerges from a particular context of application with its own distinct theoretical structures, research methods and modes of practice but which may not be locatable on the prevailing disciplinary map.” Michael Gibbons et al, The New Production of Knowledge (1994)

The Tendency to Hubris transgressing established forms of quality control ”a drift of epistemic criteria” (Elzinga) transcending human limitations ”converging technologies” (bio, info, cogno, nano) deemphasizing technological assessment lack of accountability and precaution overemphasis on entrepreneurial values propagation of competition rather than cooperation

The Forces of Habit(us) Technoscience primarily seen as providing new opportunities for scientists and engineers Taught by reshuffling established scientific and engineering fields: multi- or subdisciplinarity Politics and the rest of society left largely outside of research and education: ”outsourcing” of ethics A continuing belief in separating experts and their knowledge from contexts of use

“A discipline is defined by possession of a collective capital of specialized methods and concepts, mastery of which is the tacit or implicit price of entry to the field. It produces a ‘historical transcendental,’ the disciplinary habitus, a system of schemes of perception and appreciation (where the incorporated discipline acts as a censorship).” Pierre Bourdieu, Science of Science and Reflexivity (2004) The Discipline as Habit(us)

The Need for a ”Mode 3” or a Hybrid Imagination At the macro, or discursive level connecting technical solutions to societal problems At the meso, or institutional level organizing sites, or spaces for collective learning At the micro, or personal level integrating engineering and contextual knowledge

”Technology, Humanity and Society” in Aalborg a part of Aalborg problem-based learning (PBL) courses of lectures and supportive advising component of first-year engineering project work longtime, habitual difficulties in being accepted but sometimes it really works!

By Tore Jesper Andersen Christopher Duun Christian Holt Simon Gade Thomsen Theis Simonsen Ulrik Landberg Stephansen Anders Bundgård Sørensen A good example:

From the synopsis: “This report concerns the problems with global warming and investigates how dye sensitized solar cells (DSSC) might solve some of these. The report starts from IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report and analyzes the current global warming discussion. Next the possible technological solutions to the global warming problem is briefly described, and the DSSC is described in detail…. “

Schematic representation of the operation principle

Experimental apparatus for testing efficiency

Technology assessment, or SWOT analysis

A Socio-Cultural Approach to Problem-Based Learning Problem defined as societal, or contextual Contextual knowledge an integral part of the project ”Situated learning” of technical, or engineering skills Ongoing interaction between the technical and contextual A fostering of a hybrid competence, or identity