Technology is not an outer condition or external factor for social life but pervades every activity, often as an iterative, collective, and continuous process of social and material change (Mongili and Pellegrino 2014, xxxvi; Suchman 2009, 1). Modernity has been closely associated with technological development and innovation; indeed, modernity is unthinkable without modern technology and its standardization across different use and handling patterns. In this chapter, we will analyze the radical intertwining of modernity and (modern) technology and how their relevance can be thematized. Proceeding from the distinction between traditional and modern technology, we go on to analyze standardization as a crucial feature of contemporary technologies, the role of the ubiquitous diffusion of devices in producing a practical texture across different social worlds, and the overlap between modern technology and innovation as ideology, practice, and politics.

The claimed distinction between traditional and modern technology is a classical theme in social studies and is perhaps best delimited by two contrasting positions. In We Have Never Been Modern, Bruno Latour (1993) spoke of this distinction, noting how the modern availability of standardized data ensured a certain robustness and coherence while circulating in different use sets. Latour (1987) also introduced the idea that technology can exist only within a network or collective of different elements that include materiality, functional mechanisms, scientific knowledge embedded in devices, funding and economics, juridical framing, discursive interpretation, task series delegated to humans, power and authority, and a history of diffusion (or, in his own terms, translation) of a single device in multiple use and handling sets, along with corresponding ongoing transformation of those same devices.