Performing Technology's Stories: On Social Constructivism, Performance, and Performativity

Abstract

Ed Constant's recent article "Reliable Knowledge and Unreliable Stuff" is an attractive, graceful, and more than occasionally witty description of the growth of rational engineering belief. 1 In particular, it offers an account for the fact that our confidence in relevant scientific and technological theory tends not to be eroded by the apparently disconfirming instances endlessly thrown up in everyday practice. His argues that rational belief in generalizable knowledge is a feature of engineering, technology, and science, and he offers a Bayesian account of how such knowledge spreads across engineering time and space. His account is positive in tone. His interest is in the reliability of engineering and scientific knowledge. At the same time, as he notes, his approach is not consistent with certain historical and sociological approaches to engineering and technology, in particular with "social constructivism."