Technology in Society 40 (2015) 1e3
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Technology in Society journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/techsoc
Editorial
The papers in this Special Issue of Technology in Society entitled, “Technological Futures” explore the changing role of technology in the early 21st century. While focusing on specific aspects of the discourse and practice of technology, they all aim at contributing to the idea of “epistemic strategies” as an analytical tool to better understand what is common about the various manifestations of technological practice and how technology as a human enterprise relates to and influences society, culture and identity. The idea for this Special Issue originated at the session on Technological Futures in the World Congress of Sociology in Goteborg, Sweden, chaired by the Guest Editor of this Special Issue, Gerardo del Cerro Santamaría. Several of the papers in this issue were presented at the Goteborg session. Others joined the project at a later time. Our understanding of the concept of “epistemic strategies” (related but distinctly different from the idea of “epistemic cultures” as proposed by Karin Knorr Cetina) aims at highlighting the role of agents (individual and collective) in managing knowledge and information and in controlling the information available to interacting agents in the practice of science and technology. When dealing with science and technology in the “network society”, the idea of epistemic strategy is closely associated to the concept of “meta-narrative” and to the construction of metaphors serving as translators of symbolic codes among fields and subfields of technological endeavors. According to Manuel Castells, the technological revolution of our times, centered around information, is fundamentally altering the way we are born, we live, we learn, we work, we produce, we consume, we dream, we fight, or we die. Even beyond information, recent techno-scientific advancements have deeply changed the ways in which human beings relate with both nature and society. We can project a future where more decisions will be made by nonhuman entities and where technology will continue transforming our understanding of social, political and ethical issues. The recent economic crisis of 2008 and the policies that seek to deal with it have had distinct effects on the pace of technological innovations. On the one hand, policy measures to overcome the crisis such as the return of http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2014.10.001 0160-791X/© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keynesianism and President Obama's “fourth way” of managing capitalism by increasing public spending provided a push to some technological advancement. In Europe, novel technocratic forms of governing have been implemented in order to deal with the crisis. The results of these approaches are still unknown. Yet regardless of region or political preferences, social, political and technological innovations are seen to be the key to solving present and future problems. Furthermore, the crisis has hindered the pace of advancement of other technological innovations and transformed our understanding of the interrelationships between energy, capital and information that lie at the core of socio-economic systems. This Special Issue of Technology in Society deals with major areas that deeply influence knowledge and research concerning possible technological futures and their consequences for human and natural environments. The papers in this issue focus on new and useful epistemic strategies to approach technological issues in an increasingly techno-scientific world. The papers also seek to flesh out some of the social impacts of technological futures. The exponential quality of technological advancement requires us to address the need for revision of epistemic perspectives. What are the distinct methodologies that social scientists have to put in place in order to research the complex techno-scientific scenario looming in the horizon? What are the possibilities for collaboration between technologists and social scientists during research and policy prescription? How do technologies modify our Weltanschauung and affect both the public space and the corresponding views on social, political, and economic issues? In addition, we must not forget that we witness newer modalities of agency that are technologically-made. As the prospect is ever more present that electronically enabled teams in networks and robots with artificial intelligence contribute to financial, health, educational, and even political decisions for us, what are the implications for agency amidst this new global electronic interconnectedness? What are some likely future scenarios pertaining to the impact of technology in society and the epistemic strategies that are best suited to grasp such scenarios? More specifically, what are the significant issues to be raised and