Socio- technological constitutions

Socio- technological constitutions

The construction of relations between science/technology and society overtime challenges the architecture of policy when decisions are to be made. Passing laws and practicing polices is influenced by a set of practices in the domain of 3 dimensions: first the direct individual construction of technology (the way we relate to science in our daily lives), second the infrastructure that commands that relation (constitutions, norms, values, etc) and third the emergence of difference in the former two.

This entire idea of a philosophy of technology is relevant to dissect the mechanisms of democracy processes. Winners argues that citizens are to be much more engaged with the decisions. Awareness is the difference between political consumption and positive “active ” citizenship. This been the case, there is a larger analysis to be done related to the manner we control the origin of any technology, meaning how society have a given approach to solve problems relying on the use of technology. The architecture of this socio-technological relation between people and the so called artifacts is defiantly politicized, in the sense that this metabolism guides and constrains but does not determines the potential outcomes of technology.

Democracy as a power to solve problems is always related to conflicts that are at the same time embedded in technological/industrial orders, this fact remains to be addressed within the lines of efficiency and modernity. These key components for the construction of technocratic and material experiences are unquestionably present in the formulation of policy and eventually crystalized on public interactions. Parthasarathy gives a clear example when comparing the development of genetic testing for breast cancer between the UK and the US underlying that, as mentioned earlier, these three dimensions of socio-technological are contingent with the ability to solve problems, or in the case of this example to provide a construction sound enough for the public to use this studies. This is again a matter of power related to the way technology is presented to the “demos” based on the infrastructure that is to be accessed by users of the system and that will eventually reshape the emergent new conducts and technologies available.