Introduction

"The times they are a-changin'."

Bob Dylan

Printing, the steam engine, electricity, aircraft, ICT, genomics—these kinds of revolutionary technologies are profoundly changing, or have changed, the time-order of society. The Internet and e-mail, for example, have significantly contributed to the contemporary compression of time (and space). DNA tests, to mention another example, draw both the future (in predictive medicine) and the past (in legal verdicts) into the present. These technologically mediated practices induce, to paraphrase Martin Heidegger, new ways of "being-in-time," new time-orderings, and new patterns of cultural meaning.¹ Indeed, the times they are a-changin'—and technology plays a crucial role in this. But how, what, where, and when? And what are the cultural, social, and political consequences of these changes? This is the central topic of this special issue: the political implications of technological developments in terms of the changing perceptions and institutionalizations of time. In short: the time-politics of technology.

Coproduction

Nowadays, it is a commonplace to say that science and technology play a decisive role in our society. It is generally held that we live in a "knowledge society" or a "technological culture." Scientific knowledge and technological artifacts have become part and parcel of our way of life. Social cohesion, for example, requires a properly functioning electrical network; citizenship in present-day media democracies hinges heavily on television and other communication techniques; developments in biomedical sciences and technologies are constitutive of the way we conceptualize health and disease, or even life and death. Science and technology are not to be understood as neutral instruments by means of which autonomous human beings shape their personal and common lives; rather, it is precisely the reverse: human beings and societies change in conjunction with revolutionary innovations. In other words, scientific and technological developments affect what human beings are and how we conceptualize humanity and the good life. Science and technology, as "ways of worldmaking,"² act upon not only the means but also the ends of action.

In contemporary science and technology studies, this basic idea is phrased as the coproduction (also coevolution or coconstruction) of science, technology, and society.³ By using the concept of coproduction, two widespread but misleading modes of thinking are avoided, namely, technological determinism and humanistic voluntarism. In the former, the acting and doing of human beings are thought to be determined and limited by science and technology; in the latter, human beings are considered to be the measure of all things, and thus to be able to master science and technology. In contrast to these two modes of thinking, the idea of coproduction is based on the assumption that technology and society evolve in conjunction and are mutually dependent. They constitute each other in a reciprocal movement. Science, technology, and society are "internally related," to paraphrase Ludwig Wittgenstein.⁴

The concept of coproduction has far-reaching implications in conceptualizing the ethical and social components of science and technology. In traditional views of technology, it was assumed that these components showed up only when scientific knowledge and technological artifacts became implemented and applied. Science and technology studies have convincingly demonstrated, however, that knowledge and technological designs incorporate from the very beginning new forms of social order: new practices, new patterns of action, new networks of human and nonhuman entities, of meanings, references, and referees. Reflection on the moralities and socialities embodied in science and technology therefore requires early anticipation of these possible new worlds, including perceptions of nature and culture, definitions of health and disease, ideas about fate and free will, and the consequences of these new worlds for the distribution of responsibilities and patterns of in- and exclusion.

In contemporary social theory and philosophy, modern technological or knowledge societies are conceptualized along two axes of social coordination: the first stresses orderings in time, the second stresses orderings in space. It is widely accepted that orderings in time and space have significantly changed in the last decades as a consequence or part of globalization processes, among other reasons. Sociologists speak of "time-space distantiation" (time and space having become disconnected)^5...