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Chapter 6 - The Social Shaping of Technology (SST)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 November 2019

By
Robin Williams
Edited by
Todd L. Pittinsky
Todd L. Pittinsky
Affiliation:
Stony Brook University, State University of New York
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Summary

The social shaping of technology (SST) was one of the new analytical frameworks articulated in the 1980s that sought a more effective conceptualization of the relationship between technology and society.

MacKenzie and Wajcman (1985) coined the SST concept in their 1985 edited collection, The Social Shaping of Technology: How the Refrigerator Got Its Hum. They observed,Social scientists have tended to concentrate on the “effects” of technology, on the “impact” of technological change on society. This is a perfectly valid concern, but it leaves a prior, and perhaps more important, question unasked and therefore unanswered. What has shaped the technology that is having “effects”? What has caused and is causing the technological changes whose “impact” we are experiencing? (p. 2)

Type
Chapter
Information
Science, Technology, and Society
New Perspectives and Directions
 , pp. 138 - 162
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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