10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17460
The contribution aims to outline the next steps of STS studies in order to challenge contingencies and changes in an unstable World. The crisis of One-World World’s approach and the appearance of multiplicity in different forms opened up the possibility to a more engaged STS. In this regard, a more lateral approach and a constant attention to unstabilized phenomena has to be promoted.
application/pdf
2038-3460
17460
1
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Alessandro Mongili
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/
Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
infrastructuring
Future Hybrids in an Unsewn World
Text.Serial.Journal
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/
11
Anniversary Reflections
2020-11-12
2023-06-26
2020-11-12
2023-10-12
51-57
TS
Alessandro Mongili
2020/11/12
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17460
51
Università di Padova
2038-3460
1
infrastructuring
en
57
Future Hybrids in an Unsewn World
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/article/download/17460/16307
11
                                                                 Anniversary Reflection
                                                                                          51




Future Hybrids in an Unsewn World
Alessandro Mongili
Università di Padova



    Abstract: The contribution aims to outline the next steps of STS studies in
    order to challenge contingencies and changes in an unstable World. The cri-
    sis of One-World World’s approach and the appearance of multiplicity in dif-
    ferent forms opened up the possibility to a more engaged STS. In this regard,
    a more lateral approach and a constant attention to unstabilized phenomena
    has to be promoted.

    Keywords:         multiplicity;    pandemic;            convergence;   information
    infrastructures; infrastructuring.

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

    Corresponding author: Alessandro Mongili, FISPPA - Dip. di Filosofia,
    Sociologia, Pedagogia e Psicologia Applicata, Università di Padova, Via
    Cesarotti, 10/12, 35123 Padova, Italy. Email: alessandro.mongili@unipd.it.




1. Next 10 minutes: The public and Science and
Technology Studies

    The results of Science and Technology Studies (STS) have been dissem-
inated across many countries, academic institutions, and publics. Some
theoretical frameworks, such as Actor–Network Theory, were produced
by the first wave of STS, causing a paradigm shift in many fields of research.
Consequently, a second generation of STS scholars is now browsing and
referring to a repository of an already old wave of original theories, points
of view, and paradigmatic shifts. Among the vast number of investigable
topics, the crisis of finance capitalism, recent climate change controversies,
and the Covid-19 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic provide some terrific opportu-
nities to implement current STS scholars’ research.
    During the 1980s, when STS surged, technoscience, as well as academic
and epistemological concerns changed dramatically. The multiplication
and compartmentalization of knowledge follow two parallel courses with-


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 Italian Journal of Science and Technology Studies
 11 (1) pp. 51-57 - ISSN 2038-3460
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52                                                           Tecnoscienza – 11 (1)

out producing an equivalent theoretical effort. We are still applying theo-
retical frameworks elaborated many years ago to new phenomena. Tech-
noscience is “overwhelmingly old” (Edgerton 1999) and its ecology has
dramatically changed since 2008 and financial global crisis. Nevertheless,
the presence of STS studies and approaches has been important in the pub-
lic debate.
    In Italy, it is still quite rare to find an analysis of technoscientific or
sociotechnical phenomena from an STS perspective in public debates. Ital-
ian STS scholars are generally well informed about the theoretical debate
at the international level. However, the severe lack of important texts in
Italian has left young students and the educated public unaware of STS
approaches and uninformed about, and often disconnected from, this in-
ternational debate. Without reaching a wider public, the fate of our studies
will be parochial.


2. Next 10 days: Pandemic and contingencies

     The present time is marked by the Covid-19 pandemic. A global sense
of tragic fate is replacing inclinations toward purposeful action that previ-
ously dominated the hegemonic Western mentality. Our future no longer
seems to depend on our plans—obviously, it never did. Indeed, this global
contingency has spoiled any plan. As Latour (2020) highlighted, the econ-
omy has been suspended, public bodies (states as well as local governing
bodies, such as cities, regions, and federated local entities) have a renewed
prominent role, ecology and environmental measures have become essen-
tial, and welfare and public debt have been adopted as business as usual by
institutions that were previously strictly oriented toward budget control
and expense monitoring. In this inverted world, technoscience is playing a
crucial role both as an object of politics and as a political tool of govern-
ment, not considering the huge dimension assumed by scientific controver-
sies. The pandemic has also highlighted the length of collectives composed
of hybrid elements we were used to consider and propose in academic de-
bates.
     The pandemic has also acted as a contingency changing the previous
courses of action or becoming embedded in a renewed business as usual.
A contingency is an unexpected accident, disaster, or breakdown that gives
way to an interpretive activity, not necessarily controversial, directed at the
features of phenomena previously interpreted in another way (Pellegrino
2014). In the present case, which phenomena are these? Apart from those
shown in Latour’s (2020) various interventions, it appears that the role of
STS in public debate must be vindicated. Distance and prudence must be
abandoned, and a public stance must be adopted. Some of the most rele-
vant examples are Paul Edwards’ (2010) book on meteorology and climate
change, A Vast Machine, and John Law’s (2015) critical paper, “What’s
wrong with a one-world world?”. Although many other contributions have
Mongili                                                                    53

been made, these particular works opened up the possibility of an engaged
STS. The authors of both works developed a critical stance toward societal
and technoscientific regimes of stabilization without abandoning the tradi-
tional ANT distrust for indignation as a narrative register (Latour 1993).
Indignation cannot exist without some trust in a balanced form of society,
whereas a critical stance can be developed from an interest in equality or
from ethical or ecological interests, or it can come from other sources and
positions. Many arguments concerning the core interests of STS have
emerged from this huge contingency and from the struggle among interests
to manage them as a breakdown of old practices and of old hierarchies, or
as an embedded business as usual. All of them are waiting to be reabsorbed
in old courses of action or to serve as their stumbling stones.


3. Next 10 months: An unsewn world

    Technologies and human activities are so intimately connected today
that many people take this overlap for granted. Monitoring an entire pop-
ulation with tracking apps during a pandemic does not mean an overall
reductio ad unum as in a dystopian nightmare. It is a complex phenomenon
within which some layered activities produce distinct effects that cannot be
reduced to a single causal aspect.
    Three kinds of interwoven human, technoscientific, and material activ-
ities seem relevant today in order to produce a continuous effort for “sew-
ing” and connecting different elements: (a) convergence among different
elements around a device, which are projected, designed, or used; (b) in-
frastructured works and infrastructuring; and (c) contexts or ecologies
comprising any element that can be in-between devices or technological
systems, which interacts and changes them.
    The idea of convergence is quite fruitful for describing processes in-
volving a multitude of actors and entities with a common course of action
but without necessary agreement or a common structure.
    It may or may not contain ordering practices and involve elements or
local sets without necessarily reducing them to a common structure.
    Convergence is an often-ephemeral phenomenon combining socio-
technical elements, such as social actors, design, money, materiality,
knowledge, skill, case, situations, infrastructures, standards, forms of clas-
sification, data, duration, organizations, norms and conventions, etc. This
texture of different elements recurs increasingly as socio-technical net-
works extend their reach to any aspect of life. Especially in Northern and
Western countries, they are included in a project or are labelled as a pro-
ject, but they tend not to have a denomination, especially in the world’s
peripheries (Mongili 2015, 162-170). They increasingly saturate some en-
vironments, but they are more often distributed as one of the “wires” of
socio-material life, among others. For example, an aircraft is deeply satu-
rated with many technological systems, which are often correlated to make
54                                                            Tecnoscienza – 11 (1)

the device work. The presence of humans is rare, and their tasks are sec-
ondary when compared to those of the device. By contrast, the classroom
contains many humans, social, and material elements in-between the tech-
nological ones (heating, electricity, interactive whiteboards, Wi-Fi, etc.).
    Convergence does not correspond to a stabilized device or techno-sys-
tem, rather than neither to their purpose or failure. It is a process and a
common course of action that brings different elements closer together.
Convergence often lacks clear boundaries and a clear fate: it can drive a
stabilized novel assemblage through strong classification work and stand-
ardization, or it can include new elements in a new device. It can be an
ephemeral phenomenon producing networking. This is why it is important
to distinguish convergence from interoperability and stability. Certainly,
convergence can drive the interoperability of different devices in a more
complex system, a certain stabilization of a device in its shape and use, and
a stable network intertwined with the device. However, this outcome is far
from being assured. From a sociological point of view, it is a valuable con-
cept because it focuses on the texture of socio-material processes. Exten-
sive research on social, material, and technical convergence is constantly
emerging, and it always has a heterogeneous character in terms of the as-
cription and belonging of its elements. Similar to interaction, convergence
produces many things, including social and abstract objects (Blumer 1969),
without considering their influence in diverse personal performances and
positions. Also similar to mobility, in contrast to sedentarism (Urry 2007),
convergence is a condition that is much more diffused than stabilized phe-
nomena. Further, convergence and other socio-technical processes pro-
duce different ontologies of the same devices in their set of existence, fol-
lowing different interpretations, uses, and handling (Star 1999; Star et al.
2004).
    The surge of information artifacts and systems, which converge with
human activities in producing common work, has taken on a large-scale
dimension following digitalization. Numerous activities, such as communi-
cation, writing, gaming, scientific research, digital applications for chatting,
social networking, and the Internet and the main digital platforms, are no
longer thinkable as only-human or only-social activities. They exist because
they converge with information artifacts in some intertwined hybrid sets,
defined as information infrastructures. In other words, some information
artifact works with other entities to make the activities flow. These are all
embedded in other social, material, and technical frames, and this modu-
larity of humans, infrastructures, and devices is the very basis of a socio-
technical texture that can extend across different places, times, spaces, and
chrono-topic narratives. Their diffusion does not require the different us-
ers to share a common interpretation of the infrastructure or a common
use in different chrono-topes. Information infrastructures have the main
purpose of enabling work to be done. They demand maintenance, repair,
adaptation, and torqueing by technicians or users, defined as infrastructur-
ing, especially if they do not work and do not allow the various activities to
Mongili                                                                     55

flow; otherwise, they are transparent and taken for granted by users or nat-
uralized (Edwards et al. 2007, Mongili and Pellegrino 2014; Monteiro et al.
2013; Star 1999; Star and Ruhleder 1996).
    These constant activities of infrastructuring, compared to simple con-
vergence, create a thicker texture in contemporary societies, composed of
specific technical subcultures that connect people dispersed through space
and time but that also enable many devices and technological systems to be
naturalized in many situated sets. This socio-technical texture has been vis-
ible during the Covid-19 pandemic. In fact, people must learn to use infor-
mation infrastructures to ensure that work and social life flow, but at the
same time, devices and information artifacts must be taken for granted in
ordinary activities. A range of solutions can resolve this double tension, and
we can observe humans’ complete adaptation and complete adjustment of
devices at both ends of the spectrum. Yet these poles represent the rarest
cases. Usually, in the lives of humans and devices, we observe many ar-
rangements and a transformation of human performance as well as a con-
tinuous challenge to the stability of technologies, in their shape and uses,
not to mention the unitary interpretation of their essence, which is very
rare because consensus is not needed (Star and Ruhleder 1996).
    We must not forget that technology represents a context for a huge
number of human activities but also that any device or system occupies a
place or time in human activities or in other technological or material en-
vironments. Considering the spaces between socio-technical networks or
delimited collectives, everything in-between remains relevant not only as a
silent context but as a set of elements that interact with the socio-technical
networks. They modify some of their behaviors, knowledge, and roles, but
they also they modify some of the socio-technical elements in their use,
handling, care, or torqueing. An ecological understanding of technology
can sharpen the focus on processes and consequences, uses and articula-
tion, with respect to other conceptualizations that privilege conditions or
factors indicated as causes, such as design, purposeful action, projects, and
so on (Star 1995).
    A more ecological understanding of the human–technology whole, to
conceptualize both the singularity and universality of modern technologi-
cal conditions, can help STS promote its crucial role. All this effort directed
to connect and “sew” different elements do not solve the multiplicity and
the diversity, but it is, in some sort, a witness of the constant need to solve
problems and to face the adversities of an “unsewn” World.


4. Next 10 years: New hybrids

   Multiplicity is not a simple plurality of forms but is intertwined with
hierarchies and power relations. STS scholars working in the Global South
cannot afford a symmetry of ignorance with the Global North without run-
ning the risk of appearing out of fashion. European and North American
56                                                             Tecnoscienza – 11 (1)

topics are our topics; they have been endowed with a universalistic charac-
ter before to our subaltern eyes. Our phenomena are reduced to mere field-
work aimed at implementing these theories; they are theoretically arid and
only local (Chakrabarty 1992). If we lateralize our research toward socio-
technical processes and local participants’ practices and forms of concep-
tualization, letting them speak (Morita 2014, 311), we can challenge the
Western-centered STS canons but also amplify multiplicity.
    Multiplicity and connection represent the new dichotomy that seems to
prevail in the contemporary world(s). The fluidity of technical as well as
human performance, belonging, and identity and the local occurrences of
different ontologies (de Laet and Mol 2000) is inseparable from their con-
nection. Being connected in long collectives does not mean uniformity, nor
does it mean that their interpretation must be drawn from the design side
or using its master’s narrative. This point of view does not problematize
diversity and inequality, discard plurality, and it is seen itself as the center.
On the eve of the end of Western centrality, we must start from the partic-
ipants’ practices and conceptions to conceptualize the world in both local
and universal terms and to develop a more balanced interpretation (Morita
and Mohácsi 2013; Star 1999).


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Mongili                                                                          57

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