10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17459
If the public engagement of science and technology has been quickly expanding in the past few decades, the same cannot be said about the presence of STS expertise in the knowledge of scientists, engineers and designers. This article focuses on the opportunity given to STS by the recent trend of European technical universities towards integrating critical and reflexive skills into their educational core.
application/pdf
2038-3460
17459
1
en
Paolo Volonté
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/
Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
demarcation
The “Past Future”. Twenty Years of STS and Technical Universities
Text.Serial.Journal
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/
11
Anniversary Reflections
2020-11-12
2023-06-26
2020-11-12
2023-10-12
43-49
TS
Paolo Volonté
2020/11/12
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17459
43
Politecnico di Milano
2038-3460
1
demarcation
en
49
The “Past Future”. Twenty Years of STS and Technical Universities
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/article/download/17459/16306
11
                                                           Anniversary Reflection
                                                                                   43




The “Past Future”. Twenty Years of
STS and Technical Universities
Paolo Volonté
Politecnico di Milano



     Abstract: If the public engagement of science and technology has been
     quickly expanding in the past few decades, the same cannot be said about
     the presence of STS expertise in the knowledge of scientists, engineers and
     designers. This article focuses on the opportunity given to STS by the re-
     cent trend of European technical universities towards integrating critical
     and reflexive skills into their educational core.

     Keywords: engineering algorithm; engineers; technical universities;
     interdisciplinarity; demarcation.

     Submitted: June 15, 2020 – Accepted: June 30, 2020

     Corresponding author: Paolo Volonté, Dipartimento di Design,
     Politecnico di Milano, Via Durando, 38/A, 20158, Milano, Italy. Email:
     paolo.volonte@polimi.it.




    The time elapsed since Tecnoscienza was established, has generated
great transformations in the field of STS, but even more so in the area of
emerging technologies. Such changes, which concern everyday-life
dimensions such as communication, mobility, health, security, etc., are
profoundly modifying the lives of ordinary people and, subsequently, also
the meaning and methods of engineering and design. Increasingly, albeit
often unwittingly, it is technologists and designers who take responsibility
for determining people’s future lives. So to speak, they are becoming
today’s (unrecognized) “politicians”. I am convinced that any discussion
of the near or distant future of STS should not ignore such changes. Yet,
instead of looking ahead, I will look to the past.
    Looking back to see forward may seem a strange and contradictory
strategy. However, this is what I intend to do with the aim of anticipating
the future of STS. The challenge of predicting the future is almost inexo-
rably destined to fail for those who do not possess the right skills, which I
do not. Hence, I prefer to shift perspective and look at the past future

TECNOSCIENZA
Italian Journal of Science and Technology Studies
11 (1) pp. 43-49 - ISSN 2038-3460
www.tecnoscienza.net                                2020
44                                                          Tecnoscienza – 11 (1)

twenty years in what could be called a “future perfect” mode. That is to
say, I will observe the future twenty years of twenty years ago. I believe
this perspective can give us some insight into where the STS are going to-
day.
    Why go back twenty years? At the end of the last century, STS was an
established and rapidly expanding disciplinary field. All major journals
and international associations in the field already existed, many STS re-
search centres had flourished in British and North American universities,
disciplinary literature was widely developed and began to produce manu-
als and handbooks1. This stabilization and expansion of the field had
proceeded through the most common strategies and policies that usually
govern the development of disciplinary fields of Western science, such as
institutionalization, boundary work to establish demarcations between
contiguous disciplinary fields (Gieryn 1983), definition of a specific capi-
tal (Bourdieu 2001), construction of epistemic authority (Gieryn 1999),
co-production of identities, institutions, discourses and representations
(Jasanoff 2004).
    In this state of effervescence and stabilization, the new field of study
was confronted with neighbouring disciplinary fields, that is, first, philos-
ophy, which was the quintessential target attacked by the sociology of sci-
entific knowledge (SSK, see Bloor 1976), then sociology, or “sociology of
the social”, the main target attacked by the Actor-Network Theory (ANT,
see Latour 2005). The interest for a confrontation with scientists and en-
gineers was weaker. The so-called “science wars” originated from scien-
tists’ reactions to the constructivist approach dominating STS, rather than
from a systematic engagement of STS in a discussion with STEM disci-
plines.
    Hence, the expectations of STS for the next twenty years were quite
well defined at the turn of the century. It was time to abandon the narrow
academic endeavour and the anxiety of disciplinary demarcation against
neighbouring disciplines – i.e., those “meta-scientific” studies that cast a
critical and reflective eye over the world of science and technology, such
as philosophy and sociology – and to turn, instead, to a wider interaction
with the possible final stakeholders of STS expertise, such as scientists,
engineers, policy-makers and decision-makers. Time was ripe to trans-
form STS into a body of knowledge assisting the democratization of sci-
ence and the governance of technological development, putting a brake
on the technocratic power of experts. The editors of the third edition of
the Handbook of Science and Technology Studies were well aware of
this. Indeed, in the introduction to the Handbook they actually consid-
ered this change accomplished (Hackett et al. 2008, 1-2).
    However, it was not. During those very years, the hectic development
of digital technologies was disclosing a world governed even in its most
trivial daily activities by a hypertrophic technology that was increasingly
autonomous from human control. Emerging technologies proved to be
pervasive in people’s ordinary life, and their alleged devastating conse-
Volonté                                                                   45
quences were no longer limited to extraordinary situations (as it had been
the case, for example, with nuclear energy). In such a changing context,
the most forward-looking scholars saw in “meta” disciplines a fundamen-
tal tool to secure a more appropriate development of technologies, which
otherwise risked escaping human control. The focus of STS and other
“meta” disciplines on the “human, all too human” side of science and
technology could arguably help humanize technological progress.
    Kenneth Keniston, the founder of the STS programme at MIT, per-
suasively expressed this idea by describing what he used to call a “crisis of
the engineering algorithm” (Keniston 1996). For him, the engineers’ algo-
rithm was a set of basic principles governing engineering regardless of the
technical problem it tackles. It is based on an assumption that closely re-
sembles the Popperian principle of demarcation. Precisely, the problems
that human beings have to face both individually and collectively can be
divided into two separate realms, namely problems that can be solved in
principle, and everything else. The first realm includes technical prob-
lems, which require physical or mathematical knowledge and the devel-
opment of adequate technologies to be solved. The second realm in-
cludes, among other things, social problems, value issues and philosophi-
cal or religious matters. Very briefly, the engineering algorithm states
that, in order to effectively address the first type of problems, technolo-
gists must be completely disinterested in the second type of problems.
Engineers develop technologies, and they do it all the better the more
they succeed in isolating technical problems from social and cultural vari-
ables. Someone else will be concerned with evaluating the social impact
and ethical implications.
    Keniston’s idea at the turn of the century was that the engineering al-
gorithm was experiencing a crisis for several reasons that made the idea of
demarcation less credible. The public image of the engineer had suffered,
as s/he was no longer considered the untouchable hero of social progress.
In addition, the public image of technological innovation had suffered as
well: once defined simply as a road to a better life, it was now seen as a
major cause of environmental degradation. The emerging technologies
were increasingly complex, and the solo engineer designing a single
product had been replaced by the interacting, coordinated team of engi-
neering specialists working on a complex design of a component of a
complex socio-technical system: “society”, once something out there, had
entered the workplace. The consideration of trade-offs between incom-
mensurable factors – such as efficiency and safety, costs and reliability of
technological devices – was moving towards the centre of engineering.
Finally, what used to be dealt with as externalities, such as environmental
impact, had increasingly become an integral part of engineering design.
    To sum up, the crisis of the engineering algorithm had broken the na-
ive separation of the two realms. It was progressively exposing technolog-
ical innovation to the awareness that it was no longer possible to avoid
meta-technological problems simply by either disregarding them or by
46                                                          Tecnoscienza – 11 (1)

delegating them to others, i.e., philosophers, sociologists and politicians
who would intervene downstream of technological development. The
king was naked, and the task for the next twenty years was, at that time,
to equip engineers with a new sensitivity to problems that are unsolvable
but also unavoidable. The goal was helping them to develop technologies
that are less “naïve” from an ethical and social point of view.
    This was Keniston’s prediction in 1996. I dwelt on the next twenty
years in a “future perfect” mode because I believe that the prediction has
not been fulfilled as yet, at least not completely. If the public engagement
of science and technology (both of technoscience and with technoscience)
has been quickly expanding especially in Anglo-Saxon and North Euro-
pean countries, the same cannot be said with regard to the presence of
STS expertise in the knowledge of engineers and designers. What seems
to be a logical consequence of the crisis of the engineering algorithm is
struggling to materialize in the practice of universities and research and
development centres, and much remains to be done.
    To be sure, a trend is clearly visible, at least in Europe. According to
research we carried out at the META study unit of the Politecnico di Mi-
lano (unpublished), a policy of openness towards “meta” disciplines is
ongoing in many European technical universities, particularly those best
positioned in international rankings. This policy consists in integrating
critical and reflexive skills into the educational core of technology and
engineering Departments and Schools. The instances are highly diversi-
fied, since some primarily focus on teaching, and others on research;
some leverage the creation of interdisciplinary groups (such as at RWTH
Aachen), while others that of single-discipline institutes (e.g., STS as at
TU München and Ethics at TU Delft); some aim to implement an exten-
sive introduction of humanities courses for all engineering students, while
others to the structuring of specialized courses for students who are par-
ticularly sensitive to the topic. In general, groups of STS scholars that are
active in European technical universities are gradually moving from niche
and marginal clusters to the core sets, thus becoming a fundamental part
of the universities’ teaching and research programmes.
    The reasons for this process, namely the legitimating arguments put
forward in official documents, refer to both the technologists’ adequate
education to enable them to govern emerging technologies and the uni-
versity’s social responsibility. For example, the “Mission Statement” pub-
lished on the ETH Zürich website states that the commitment to consider
humanities and social sciences integral parts of the technical university’s
educational profile derives from “the need for a new approach to
knowledge and technology”, which aims at equipping the new engineers
“to      tackle     the     enormous      challenges     facing     mankind”
(https://bit.ly/3fWtZEI). TU München, on the other hand, insists on our
responsibility towards the future, which involves technologists in the fore-
front to the extent that technological progress has become one of the
main factors determining people’s life in economically advanced coun-
Volonté                                                                    47
tries: “Our aim is to equip our students with the capacity to accompany
social change with a sense of responsibility. [...] Society should know
what we are working on in science and technology for our future, and
how we are preparing young people for tomorrow’s challenges” (“Our
mission statement: We invest in talents. Recognition is our return”, https:
/ /bit.ly/30IqcVa). Similarly, TU Delft claims to connect technological re-
search systematically to societal challenges, “and will make this more visi-
ble to the outside world, by stimulating multi-disciplinary, and cross-
faculty research that aims at responsible, societal innovation” (“Strategic
Framework 2018-2024”, https://bit.ly/3eOuuiN). Reference to the Euro-
pean cultural tradition, implicitly opposed to that of other technological
giants (such as China and the United States), is found in the statements of
the Département Humanités et Sciences Sociales at the École Polytech-
nique in Paris, which emphasize that the humanities and social sciences
“provide a unique and enriching experience for students, putting their
scientific knowledge into perspective with courses in history and in politi-
cal and social structures. In the tradition of the age of Enlightenment, the
goal of the HSS department is to train critical minds that are curious and
open to the issues of the current world” (“Département Humanités et
Sciences Sociales”, https://bit.ly/2Brzxbu).
     However, while this trend is indeed ongoing, visible and publicly
claimed by European technical universities, most engineers continue to
train on the engineering algorithm, and change is slow. The fact that, to
date, STS have not been particularly active in seeking confrontation with
engineering disciplines has contributed to the situation. A new deal is
needed in the years to come, that is to say STS should develop a new atti-
tude towards technology, no longer focused just on the critical observa-
tion of the way in which it develops but also interested in creating cross-
fertilization situations with technologists themselves, as they are the main
actors of technological development. Since ethnography has historically
been the method preferred by STS scholars, the opportunity offered by
collaborative situations with engineers will not escape the eye – that is,
the chance to work side by side, experiencing, as it were, “technology-in-
action”.
     Technical universities offer a favourable setting to this end. Our field
of study, which by nature is a non-discipline born of the convergence of
multiple disciplinary interests, and which has gradually acquired the abil-
ity to fertilize traditional sociology with its own methods and its own spe-
cific way of looking at reality, should now seek to apply those skills to en-
gineers and technologists, as well as to scientists. STS could fulfil the task
of training them in the ability to take a step back from the very object of
technological research and to observe it with the detachment of critical
thinking and with the breadth of horizon produced by reflexivity. Indeed,
this could make the design work more complex and less efficient, but at
the same time more sustainable in its results, which would be a substan-
tial achievement. Cultural traditions, such as ANT and SCOT, could pro-
48                                                                 Tecnoscienza – 11 (1)

vide very valuable tools in this direction.
    However, the precondition is for STS to emancipate themselves from
the constraints dictated by the stabilization process I have described
above, and to open up to a greater and more authentic interdisciplinary
relationship with other social sciences and humanities. Philosophy of
technology has been ground-breaking in this regard, as several philoso-
phers have made considerable efforts, in recent decades, to open up to
the realm of empirical data and, in particular, to STS methods and body
of knowledge. Starting from the post-phenomenology of Don Ihde (1993;
see Ihde and Selinger 2003), scholars such as Peter-Paul Verbeek (2011)
have dialogued extensively with ANT and STS. Especially in the Nether-
lands, philosophers of technology have embraced the principles of Value
Sensitive Design (Friedman, Kahn and Borning 2006), which aims at in-
tegrating technical investigations about designs and their operational
principles with empirical investigations concerning contexts and experi-
ences of people involved in technological environments and conceptual
investigations intended to clarify the values at stake and to discuss the
trade-offs between values (see Van de Poel and Royakkers 2011, 188-
189). Similarly, STS should rediscover their original interdisciplinary vo-
cation and overcome traditional disciplinary boundaries. They could thus
become protagonists of a process that is currently changing the education
of technologists and engineers and will, therefore, end up profoundly in-
fluencing the world we live in.


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Volonté                                                                         49


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     1
       Although the 1995 Handbook of Science and Technology Studies (Jasanoff
et al. 1995) is numbered as a second edition, it is actually the first edition
explicitly named with “Science and Technology Studies”, as the previous one was
titled Handbook of Science, Technology, and Society (Spiegel-Rösing and de
Solla Price 1977). For a study of the history of STS Handbooks see Ienna (2018).
