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Introduction One of the difficulties facing any study of technology is heterogeneity. Unlike the case of science, in which it is possible to identify communities of practitioners who produce and ratify scientific knowledge, in technology there is a variety of groups involved. Furthermore, it is hard to say that any one group is the crucial one on which research efforts should be concentrated . Among the different participants in any field of technology one can find individual inventors, research scientists, designers and design engineers, production engineers, sales and marketing teams, bankers and financial advisers, lawyers, politicians and state officials, and, of course, consumers—whether individuals, firms, or state agencies. The activities of these groups may take place within one single location, such as a firm or a government laboratory; more often, however, a variety of locations is involved. Technology is such an integral part of modern life that virtually every aspect of an industrialized society intersects at some point with technological issues. Clearly, part of the task of the emerging new field of technology studies is the identification of research sites at which the complexity of the seamless web is manageable but which at the same time serve to capture key aspects of technological development. We call such locations strategic research sites. In this part several such research sites are offered. Although the diversity of possible research sites is clear from the following studies, many of the chosen locations do share characteristics that highlight features of the new approach to technology. In particular, the seamless web of technology and society is rewoven by breaking down the all too frequently encountered rigid divisions among different domains, such as between science and technology, among invention, marketing, and consumption, and more broadly between technology and its social impact. As noted previously, the new approach to technology does not recognize such distinctions. Authors are able to move easily among the contexts of 186 Strategic Research Sites university science departments, R&D laboratories, the military, the courts, and the consumer. They go wherever their study takes them, and they do not feel uncomfortable or embarrassed when they cross some sacred boundary. Our picture of technology on one side and society on the other is breaking down. These studies show that society is at work everywhere: within the walls of laboratories, defense establishments, firms, hospitals, and the home. A number of different technologies are featured in this part. They include a military technology (guided missiles), two medical technologies (drugs and ultrasound), and a domestic technology (the cooking stove). Some authors (notably Edward Constant) embellish their arguments with examples drawn from a range of technologies. Again, we stress that the analytical issues of interest here do not depend on the particular technology studied. All technologies, whether the highly sophisticated guided weapons examined by Donald MacKenzie or the humble cooking stove studied by Ruth Schwartz Cowan, present similar types of problems in terms of producing an account of their development. In Donald MacKenzie’s study of the development of strategic missile technology, Hughes’s concept of a technological system is found to be fruitful. Although in Hughes’s work the system takes on a physical dimension corresponding to the power lines that spread coextensively with the power system, MacKenzie argues that a seemingly self-contained piece of technology, such as the guided missile, can also be treated as a system. In this case the system includes not only the hardware of the missile and its inertial guidance system but also the strategic considerations embedded in the targeting practices. MacKenzie’s study is particularly illuminating because, as in Hughes’s own work, it cuts across a variety of social groups and actors. Thus defense bureaucrats, military strategists, and even on occasion US congressmen, as well as the scientists and engineers working at the Draper Laboratory at MIT are all included in the system. This strategic research location thus exemplifies the potential for combining the social, political, economic, and technical factors in the shaping of technology. Edward Constant’s essay, like MacKenzie’s, takes up the theme of the systems approach. The main focus of attention in this chapter is a location that has received much previous attention in sociology—the organization. Constant’s analysis, however, adds to the previous work by placing the emphasis on the relationships entailed by technological innovation within the organization. His chapter is particularly useful for the choice of strategic research sites because he considers the merits of studying the organiza- [18.218.234.83] Project MUSE (2024...

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