Opening Up Technologies to the Social: Between Interdisciplinarity and Citizen Participation
Susana Nascimento, Alexandre Pólvora · Design Issues · 2013
Introduction Our notion of opening up technologies is primarily linked to both a conceptual debate regarding the social contexts of artifacts and a more practical approach regarding past, present, and future options for designing, building, and using them. But ultimately, it points to questions about the social purposes that should guide technological development, about the social conditions under which artifacts are to be produced and used, about how all these factors contribute to configurations of macro and microscopic social structures, and about how we—as social and human scientists—might act upon these scenarios. Our key stances depart from the broad domain of science and technology studies (STS) where a few “openings” are already in motion with reference to understandings of technologies and their social connections. However, our paths cross and join other fields where different degrees of openness, currently in place, are encouraging and producing numerous levels of discussion and change in such disciplines as design, architecture, engineering, and computation, among others. By mixing contributions from such diverse sources, this article seeks to identify and set directions for further extensions of technological openness to social subjects, stakeholders, and platforms. To reach our goal, we suggest approaching it from two cardinal directions: (1) interdisciplinary collaborations between social and human researchers and the myriad of people and institutions designing and building artifacts; and (2) the participation of citizens and communities in these processes. These routes are only two amid several others that currently contribute to the opening of technological grounds to social realms. Nonetheless, they become highlighted here because of their effectiveness and potential that has been demonstrated in recent years. They rarely correspond to two separate processes occurring at distinct moments, or in isolated projects or contexts. In addition, most endeavors that choose to follow either one, or a combination of both directions, don’t always have the same levels of commitment, or even the same degrees of engagement with social researchers or lay publics, for