Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies

Interesting Worlds to Come. Science & Technology Studies Facing More-than-Human Challenges

Simone Arnaldi — 2024-01-16

This editorial by the board of STS Italia (The Italian Society for Social Studies of Science and Technology) introduces a Special Section of the Journal collecting a set of contributions to the IX STS Italia Conference, held in June 2023. The Special Section features an invited Lecture by Huub Dijstelbloem followed by a short commentary by Annalisa Pelizza. In addition, the Section includes the Crossing Boundaries “Drawing Bruno Together” and the Scenario “Bruno Latour and Artificial Intelligence” dedicated to Bruno Latour and both written by long-term colleagues, friends and exegetes of his work.

Bark, Gum, Garbage bins (citizen shadows series) (Cover’s Comment)

Linda Knight — 2024-01-16

Moving the Immovable: Climate Change and the Multiple Tensions between Mobility and Immobility

Huub Dijstelbloem — 2024-01-16

The lecture examines the emergence of the research field of climate migration from a philosophy of science and technology perspective. It explores the tensions between mobility and immobility by discussing three specific technologies and infrastructures that emerge from the notion of climate migration and push mobility to the extreme: interventionist policies that encourage managed retreat, experimental digital technologies that promote circulation, and a proposal for a climate passport. It then considers implications of this paradigm of mobility for STS, focusing on immobility as a concept that can deepen and challenge our understanding of a trinity of states, sovereignty, and territory under conditions of climate change and mobility. By reconceptualizing the relationship between mobility and immobility, the lecture proposes a nuanced and refined alternative to the emphasis on motion, movement, and mobility, with the aim of contributing to the discussion of how climate (im)mobilities and Anthropocene (im)mobilities unfold.

Damian Hughes, Picturing Ecology: Photography and the Birth of a New Science, Palgrave Macmillan, 2022

Camilo Castillo — 2024-01-16

Angela Balzano, Antonia Anna Ferrante and Federica Timeto (eds.), Making Kin. Fare parentele, non popolazioni, DeriveApprodi, 2022

Michela Cozza — 2024-01-16

Frédéric Goulet and Dominique Vinck (eds.), Faire sans, faire avec moins: Les nouveaux horizons de l'innovation, Presses des Mines, 2022

Gabrielle Lavenir — 2024-01-16

Eric Monteiro, Digital Oil: Machineries of Knowing, The MIT Press, 2022

Barbara Lazarotto — 2024-01-16

Sarah Pink, Martin Berg, Deborah Lupton and Minna Ruckenstein (eds.), Everyday Automation: Experiencing and Anticipating Emerging Technologies, Routledge, 2022

Pedro dos Santos Maia — 2024-01-16

Gérard Dubey and Alain Gras, La Servitude électrique: Du rêve de liberté à la prison numérique, Éditions du Seuil, 2021

Robert A. Williams — 2024-01-16

The Role of Patenting in the Valuation of Biomedical Innovation

Michael Morrison — 2024-01-16

Intellectual property rights (IPR), and patents in particular, play a central role the commercialisation of new knowledge and techniques in the life sciences. This paper analyses the effects of the patent ecosystem using the sociology of valuation and evaluation. Specifically, the patent ecosystem can be interrogated in terms of which activities, entities or choices it valorises and which it disincentivises. This will be illustrated using three case studies of emerging life sciences technologies; gene editing, induced pluripotent stem cells, and 3D bioprinting. Each represents a domain of growing patenting activity. This analysis illustrates how the practical application of the tests for patentability by national patent offices facilitates fragmentation of complex biotechnological processes into multiple, distinct legal claims. The resulting proliferation of IPR gives a particular value to patents as rent-generating devices, as bargaining tools to negotiate market access, reassure investors, and as tools for shaping the configuration of emerging technology fields.

“I Don’t Know if It Wanted Me to Dance”. On Leading and Being Led in Human-eGate Interaction

Bettina Paul — 2024-01-16

Automated border controls, like eGates, are becoming an everyday experience when travelling. Besides their contested character as a biometrical border, these access control systems are either taken for granted in their smooth functioning or are seen as forcing humans into a scripted sequence of action. Based on a technographic study of laboratory eGate-testings in Germany, we argue for a different approach in understanding the specific human-machine-interaction. Drawing on Pickering’s (2012) “dance of agency”, we will show that the reciprocal interaction of using an eGate comprises facets of routine, anticipation and mimicry. Attuning to the oscillation of agency, where leading and being led is reciprocal, we must recognize that even automated systems rely on human beings, their bodies and their senses to make adjustments. The analysis suggests that both entities are interwoven in an asymmetric way, which allows seeing it from a new angle that incorporates usability and STS-perspectives to approach border technologies. In doing so, the focus on (laboratory) testing shows that it can bring back and secure human agency within interactions with border technologies.

Drawing Bruno Together

Madeleine Akrich — 2024-01-16

This Crossing Boundaries stems from two events: the recent STS-Italia conference (Bologna, June 2023) and the 4S/ESOCITE conference (Cholula, December 2022). Both events dedicated a space for reflecting on Bruno Latour’s intellectual legacy, inviting some of the scholars who had the chance and the privilege to work with him. The text opens with a reflection by Madeleine Akrich on her two-decade experience working alongside Latour and on the multifaceted nature of his contributions to sociology, anthropology, and philosophy. The text continues with a contribution by Huub Dijstelbloem, who explores Latour’s magmatic thinking, emphasizing the transformative power of his ideas. Annalisa Pelizza traces two key associations in Bruno Latour’s intellectual trajectory. The first one traces back to Latour’s early engagement with the semiotics of the “École de Paris” and Greimas’ theory of enunciation, emphasizing the local context of the French semiotic debate. The second association delves into Latour’s connection with technofeminism and Donna Haraway’s material-semiotics, highlighting a global dialogue initiated in the late 1980s. Finally, Paolo Landri underlines the transformative potential of Latour’s vocabulary in the context of education, underlying the interdisciplinary connections fostered by following Latour.

On Causality, the Modern Contract and Inertia in “Climate Migration”

Annalisa Pelizza — 2024-01-16

Commentary to the Lecture “Moving the immovable: Climate change and the multiple tensions between mobility and immobility”, by Huub Dijstelbloem (this issue).

Bruno Latour and Artificial Intelligence

Tommaso Venturini — 2024-01-16

This scenario discusses generative AI in light of Bruno Latour’s sociology of technology. It considers why Latour showed little interest in the simulation of intelligence and how connectionist AI fails to meet his condition for scientificity but offers a fascinating writing mediation. AI is most interesting not because it emulates human thinking or writing, but because it differs from them. Drawing on actor-network theory, this scenario argues against the idea of machines becoming detached from their creators and highlights how AIs can only exist through the support of their human assistants. The risks associated with these technologies do not come from an improbable singularity, but from their embedding in the dull and exploitative industry of digital attention economy.