Side-effects of (In)Sensible Participatory Technology Developments

Session Submission Type: Traditional (Closed) Panel

Abstract

A peculiar case of insensibility in technosciences is raised by the increasing interest in participatory technology development (PTD). PTD enfolds a dynamic that could be described as a double-bind situation for science and technology studies (STS) itself: STS insights often expose one-sided processes of technology development, insensible to social issues, creating a clear rationale for PTD designs. However, an often unintended as well as (due to STS’s insensibility) ignored outcome of PTD consists in the construction of a dualistic approach reintroducing a distinction between humans (routed in nature) and technology (routed in culture). The unintended problem reverses the calls to overcome historically-contingent, socially constructed distinctions, and the distinctions they engender (e.g. sex, gender, race, bodily fitness, etc.) and to promote the freedom to choose who- and whatever a conscious entity (cyborg) would like to be (embodied or not). In the proposed session, I would like to gather scholars who have carried out research in the field of PTD with the intention of detecting the undesirable, mostly non-intended side effects of user integration and their relation to societal structures promoting hierarchical oppositions and social inequality.

Sub Unit

• 4S Annual Meeting

Chair

• Diego Compagna, Technische Universität Berlin

Individual Presentations

• Absences that Matter: Representations of Old Age in the CURE-Elderly-Personas - Susanne Oechsner, University of Vienna

• Federal Institutes: Alignment with the Institutional Proposal? - Rodrigo Rafael Fernandes, IFPR; Sidney Reinaldo da Silva, IFPR

• Users as the Only Variable – Participation as Re-Education - Tim Seitz, Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (WZB)

• Locals in the Wasteland: The Unintended Effects of (In)Sensible Local Participatory Technology Development. - Céline Parotte, University of Liège