Situating Technoscience: An Inquiry into Spatialities

TLDR

Science and technology were historically viewed as universal, but STS research has located them first in laboratories and then in networks, revealing region and network topologies, and recent work proposes additional spatial forms. The paper investigates the spatial characteristics of science and technology. The study finds that technoscience objects can be fluid, shifting relations, or constant through simultaneous absence and presence—termed fire—so that the global is enacted across four topological systems.

Abstract

This paper explores the spatial characteristics of science and technology. Originally seen as universal, and therefore outside space and place, studies in science, technology, and society (STS) located it first in specific locations—laboratories—and then in narrow networks linking laboratories. This double location implied that science is caught up in and enacts two topological forms— region and network—since objects in networks hold their shape by freezing relations rather than fixing Euclidean coordinates. More recent STS work suggests that science and technology also exist in and help to enact additional spatial forms. Thus some technoscience objects are fluid, holding their form by shifting their relations. And yet others achieve constancy by enacting simultaneous absence and presence, a topological possibility which we call here fire. The paper concludes by arguing that the ‘global’ includes and is enacted in all four of these topological systems.