Tecnoscienza : Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies 

About: Tecnoscienza : Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies is an academic journal. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Reproductive technology & Smart city. Over the lifetime, 126 publications have been published receiving 1314 citations.

On “The Design of Everyday Life”

Abstract: The article highlights the intersection between design, STS and consumption outlining practices as the central unit of analysis. The paper illustrates this perspective with reference to a variety of examples, including home improvements and do-it-yourself (DIY) projects, digital photography and plastic stuff. In the paper some questions are raised: where does competence lie? Does it reside in the human or in the non-human, or in the relation between the two? What does the concept of a human-non-human hybrid mean for the sociology of consumption? And how does the humanmaterial distribution of competences affect the details of everyday life and what people do? Keywords: Design; STS; consumption; material culture; theory of practice.

Of Sensors and Sensitivities. Towards a Cosmopolitics of “Smart Cities”?

Abstract: This essay reviews diverse strands of empirical and theoretical work in different urban studies areas (urban planning, urban ethnography, urban geography, and STS) reflecting on the manifold ways in which the smart city project is being “opened up” for scrutiny through experimental projects developing digitally-mediated sensing practices of either a specific or broad kind: i.e., producing both devices formally devised for sensing specific parameters, and sensing devices –emerging from less specific digital technology arrangements– used to share experiences, show solutions or politicize different urban issues. In doing this, we seek to understand, from an STS standpoint, the different ways in which a broad range of works are analysing the development, intervention, maintenance, and opposition of these ideas. In the first section we focus on understanding the definitions, features and clashes that several of these corporate projects (mostly municipal in nature) have come across, deploying smart devices, such as sensors to produce an “algorithmic city”. In the second section we expand the meanings of “smartness,” focusing on grassroots appropriations of broader digital arrangements and politicizations of open source infrastructures to display other forms of urban sensitivities, contributing to the cosmopoliticization of the “smart city” project. Keywords: Smart city; cosmopolitics; sensors; experiment; sensitivities.

Meeting the Universe Halfway. Feminist debate and Actor-Network Theory

Abstract: Normal 0 0 1 138 735 *** ********** * ******** ** 10 1 970 11.773 0 14 0 0 English abstract Starting from Karen Barad’s volume Meeting the Universe Halfway, Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning , I intend to focus on some points of convergence and divergence between two different debates on STS: the feminist approach and the Actor-Network Theory. This paper starts from the assumption that the growing interest in ontology and realism, and the switch from a representationalist paradigm to a performative one, are more or less explicitly influenced, in both debates, by Jilles Deleuze’s philosophy, with particular regard to his approach to reality as becoming. I eventually focus on how feminist STS and ANT have interpreted this opening to a more complex concept of reality, also taking into account the implications, even political ones, of these two different epistemological approaches. English keywords : Deleuze, ontology, complexity, feminism, ANT.

Maintenance & Repair in Science and Technology Studies

Abstract: Notably taking root in the first laboratory ethnography studies and in the interactionist sociology of work, several studies have recently provided an in-depth account of maintenance and repair work in very different sites (workplaces, urban settings, homes). They have provided great insights to not only reconsider largely invisible operations, but also to pursue the discussion of issues such as innovation, ordering processes and materiality in Science and Technology Studies. In this introduction, we focus on two topics of discussion. First, we show how maintenance and repair studies expand our understanding of sociomaterial work and object agency. Second, we highlight reasons for exploring maintenance and repair practices to challenge and decenter innovation studies. Keywords: maintenance & repair; vulnerability; innovation; materiality; modes of ordering.

The Future as Practice. A Framework to Understand Anticipation in Science and Technology

Abstract: The future has become a common theme in governance of contemporary societies, particularly in the context of technological development. It is presented as open and uncertain, which, either as an opportunity or as a threat, demands a sense of urgency. Concretely, the future is embodied and made present through expectations, which have a performative effect in the constitution of socio-technical fields. These expectations are embedded in socio-material practices, through which they are produced, shared, shaped and contested. In this essay, I propose a framework to understand anticipation as a set of interrelated techno-scientific practices, which I call an anticipatory assemblage. This perspective has two contributions: first, it allows an in-depth understanding of phenomena such as technological hype cycles. Secondly, it frames the performative aspect of expectations in relation to governance, by considering how a series of anticipatory practices co-produce techno-scientific fields. I specify this framework using the case of two emerging technologies: graphene and 3D printing, for which I stress some of the differences in anticipatory practices and governance. Keywords: anticipation; sociology of expectations; governance; anticipatory practices; futures.