Roundtable on Digital STS

Abstract

"The digital" has given rise to an abundance of critiques, experiments, irritations and reflections in STS over the last years. While some researchers and scholars in the field criticize the casting of digital technology in "revolutionary" terms, others propose that the commitment to "the mundane" in STS itself needs be opened up for questioning in the face of digital environments. And while the "presentism" of digital culture is singled out by some as preventing the development of durable understandings of socio-technical transformations, others propose that today's media environment invite us to cultivate more flexible and collaborative forms of enquiry. To discuss these issues, this roundtable brings together contributors and non-contributors to the edited volume digitalSTS: A Field Guide for Science & Technology Studies.

Engaging with core themes of the book, the roundtable asks: How does interrogating the digital allow us to redress classic conceptual framings in STS (standardization, materiality, inclusion and exclusion, power, epistemology and ontology)? What long-standing or emerging relationships can be fostered with computational, information or design fields and STS? Does the digital open up spaces for new forms of participation in research on science, technology and society? Does it enable or lead to changing relations between STS and its significant others (activism, policy, science, design, engineering, social science)? How can post-colonial, feminist, or queer threads in STS shift understandings of the digital? Can the empirical, methodological and theoretical contributions of STS help to combat, or nuance, digital presentism?

Discussants

• Laura Forlano, Illinois Institute of Technology

• Trevor John Pinch, Cornell University

• David Ribes, Universty of Washington

• Warren Sack, University of California, Santa Cruz

• Lucy Suchman, Lancaster University

• Janet Vertesi, Princeton University

• Malte Ziewitz, Cornell University

• Steven Jackson, Cornell University

Session Organizer

• Noortje Marres, University of Warwick, UK