How is technology made?--That is the question!

✍ Scribed by Bijker, Wiebe E. (author)

• Book ID: 115467366
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Year: 2009
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 101 KB
• Volume: 34
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0309-166X
• DOI: 10.1093/cje/bep068

✦ Synopsis

This article reviews constructivist technology studies, and especially the social construction of technology (SCOT). To investigate how these constructivist studies regard the ontology of technology, I will trace their historical development in units of analysis, methodological approaches and research questions. Constructivist technology studies are relativistic in only one sense: methodological. They are agnostic with respect to the ontology of technology. Constructivist studies of technology thus do not primarily answer the question 'what is technology?'; they trace the process 'how to make technology'.