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Preface to the Anniversary Edition
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Preface to the Anniversary Edition Twenty-five years ago a small international workshop on new developments in the Social and Historical Studies of Technology was held at the University of Twente in the Netherlands. That workshop led to the first edition of this book. We think enough time has passed to produce a new edition. In this new edition we have left all the chapters and the original introduction unchanged—all we have added is this new 2011 preface and the preceding foreword by Deborah G. Douglas of MIT. In this preface we reflect on what happened during the subsequent twenty-five years. Some recollections of the beginnings will help to position the volume in the landscape of the 1980s’ history and sociology of technology. We then trace some of the developments that first appeared in this book and helped shape the emerging field of social studies of technology. Our original 1987 introduction told the story of how this volume came about in some detail, ranging from pink champagne in the Austrian mountains to rental bikes in the Dutch polders. With the benefit of hindsight, it is worth highlighting some additional aspects. One key step was to broaden the initial gathering of sociologists to include historians of technology , too. This suggestion came from Donald MacKenzie and led to Wiebe Bijker and Trevor Pinch contacting Tom Hughes, who eventually agreed to join us as an editor. We should explain why this preface is being written by only two of the three original editors. Sadly, Tom Hughes is too ill to be able to write with us today; while he is physically healthy, his memory has faded and so he is not able to contribute to these reflections. Tom had agreed with much enthusiasm to take part in this new edition when the idea was first suggested in 2007, but to our great misfortune we waited too long to actually sit down together and start writing. As part of our aim was to recapitulate where the field had gone and what new directions were looming we are xii Preface to the Anniversary Edition acutely aware that this preface can only do justice to the views of two of us. Beneath the veneer of the Southern gentleman, Tom is such a strong character that we dare not presume to speak for him. We have tried below to summarize as best as we can some of the developments in the systems approach he is best known for, but readers should be aware that Tom is a man full of surprises. Indeed one of the biggest surprises of our careers was his agreeing to edit the original book with us. We both recall that it was with much trepidation that we approached him back in 1985. Tom seemed the best person to collaborate with: he was enthusiastic about sociology, had an encyclopedic knowledge of history of technology—at the drop of a hat he could always come up with the perfect example to illustrate some point—but he was Tom Hughes. To us he was almost a god—an established world leader of the field and a professor at a major American university. And we were virtual unknowns who did not have regular university appointments. Much to our surprise Tom said “yes,” and even said “yes” with such enthusiasm that we soon found ourselves being summoned by Tom to join him at various venues around the world to make sure the introduction got written. Some seasoned American academics later commented that they had been surprised that such a prominent scholar as Tom Hughes had been willing to add his name to such a wild project and to collaborate with two young and unknown Europeans. We can only think that it testifies to Tom’s broad vision and the true excitement generated during the workshop. A key question was, of course, the volume’s title. The title of the workshop was a bit bland: “New Developments in the Social Studies of Technology .” It was Gerard de Vries who suggested the eventual title, “The Social Construction of Technological Systems”—a perfect Dutch compromise between two of three major approaches in the book, social construction of technology and systems. (We will use the acronym SCOTS in the remainder of this new preface to denote the volume and the work and authors related to it.) When planning the workshop, we did not have publication in mind. Whether this was because of less pressure to publish back then, or because...