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This thesis has been pursued in the primary interest of exploring the relationship between planning and architecture specific to the mixed-use planning and development process. More acutely, this research has been conducted to investigate how the relationships and communication socially construct architectural technology. Through a constructivist lens, and reaching back to historic themes of human placemaking, this work reveals, that, history has, but yet again, to repeat itself. As people make choices about the built environment, those choices gain momentum, both socially and materially. Mixed-use development is one typological choice that is making a noticeable re-emergence. Amidst a suburban hegemony, will mixed-use development regain “typological momentum?” / text

Syftet med denna uppsats har varit att undersöka hur uppfattningen av det svenska vattenkraftsystemet förändrades under 1960-talet, samt att tillämpa teorin Social Construction of Technology, SCOT, på vattenkraften genom att studera debatten om Vindelälven. Frågan om Vattenfall skulle tillåtas bygga ut Vindelälven var central i 1960-talets vattenkraftsdebatt. I uppsatsen undersöks hur de tre grupperna Vattenfall, Svenska Naturskyddsföreningen och lokalbefolkningen längs älven förhöll sig till frågan om Vindelälvens framtid och vilka argument de använde sig av i debatten om älven. Uppsatsen undersöker om Vattenfall, Naturskyddsföreningen och lokalbefolkningen kan förstås som tre relevanta grupper enligt SCOTs definition, samt huruvida det svenska vattenkraftsystemet nådde closure 1970. Det material som har studerats utgörs av tidnings- och tidskriftsartiklar från de tre grupperna, publicerade under perioden 1960—1970. Resultatet av undersökningen visar att Vattenfall och Naturskyddsföreningen uppfyller kriterierna för att betraktas som två relevanta grupper enligt SCOT. Vad gäller lokalbefolkningen är det mer komplicerat. Invånarna längs älven delar inte en gemensam uppfattning om utbyggnaden av Vindelälven och kan således inte betraktas som en relevant grupp, däremot finns det undergrupper som eventuellt uppfyller kriterierna. 1970 års beslut att bevara älven var avgörande för den fortsatta utbyggnaden av svenska älvar och kan ses som ett första steg på det svenska vattenkraftsystemets väg mot closure, vilket förmodligen nåddes 1993 i och med riksdagens beslut att klassa fyra älvar som nationalälvar.

The ‘localist turn’ in technology studies, exemplified by Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and Social Construction of Technology (SCOT), emphasises the agency of actors in innovation processes while, arguably, neglecting structural influences. They provide rather little guidance regarding methodological choices apart from encouraging rich description and offer only limited capacity to explain the dynamics of technological change. This thesis addresses the need to articulate a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of the contextually-shaped, often highly contingent processes of technological innovation. For this purpose a single, in-depth longitudinal case study was conducted of the development, implementation and use of a strategic information system - a strategic network planning tool - in a German car company. It was analysed applying a biographical perspective which argues for extended analytical foci across multiple sites, moments and time frames in technology studies to account for the complexities and uncertainties inherent in technological change processes. A mixed repository of historical and ethnographic data has been collected, drawing on public and internal corporate documents as well as 44 interviews and extended periods of participant observation at multiple sites. The data was coded and analysed aided by simultaneously building an extensive data-rich timeline of the innovation journey. As a result, our empirically detailed focus on a twelve-year period is contextualised by a historical narrative considering corporate historical developments over three decades. An ecology metaphor is articulated to appreciate multiple episodes and moments of innovation dispersed in space and time - a view neglected by common metaphors of systems and networks. The metaphor underpins a loose framework, tentatively entitled the Ecological Shaping of Technology, that draws on concepts from science and technology studies and cognate discussions in the sociology of professions to engage with the intricacies of space and scales of time in studying the ‘Biographies of Artefacts and Practices’ (Pollock and Williams, 2009; Hyysalo, 2010). The framework pursues a dynamic, longitudinal understanding of the evolution of a protracted technology development project which went through significant changes in conception and in the players involved and their configuration. This is conceptualised in terms of the development of a ‘kernel’ (Ribes & Polk, 2015) of resources and services managed by, and made available to, an alliance of players. While alliances can shift, the kernel persists and evolves over time as players try to attract more resources by entering into negotiations in promising ‘arenas of expectation’ (Bakker et al., 2011) or navigating around those that are less amenable. Technology is portrayed as an element of a package of instrumentalities (de Solla Price, 1983) comprising theories, methods and instruments that are spread across a wider ecology of distributed boundary objects (Star & Griesemer, 1989). Technologies crystallise from efforts of adopting, testing and developing packages to solve specific problems (Fujimura, 1995). A specific technology is co-developed, according to the set of local constrains and specifications delineated by a kernel's alliance of ecologies. These are understood in terms of Abbott’s (2005) conception of linked ecologies. The historically shaped and contingent ecological topography of an innovation project is highlighted as a major influence in the social shaping of technological artefacts.

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The goal of my project is a detailed analysis of the technological culture of the United States Air Force from a Science and Technology Studies (STS) perspective. In particular, using the metaphor of the Air Force as religion helps in understanding a culture built on matters of life-and-death. This religious narrative—with the organizational roles of actors such as priests, prophets, and laity, and the institutional connotations of theological terms such as sacredness—is a unique approach to the Air Force. An analysis of how the Air Force interacts with technology—the very thing that gives it meaning—from the social construction of technology approach will provide a broader understanding of this relationship. Mitcham's dichotomy of the engineering philosophy of technology (EPT) and the humanities philosophy of technology (HPT) perspectives provides a methodology for analyzing Air Force decisions and priorities. I examine the overarching discourse and metaphor—consisting of techniques, technologies, experiences, language, and religion—in a range of historical case studies describing the sociological and philosophical issues of the Air Force. As the Air Force is the offspring of the U.S. Army, these examples begin with the Civil War era and the invention of the Gatling gun before moving to the interwar period's Air Corps Tactical School and its seminal organizational thinking about the aircraft. Moving to the more modern times after the birth of the Air Force, I describe and compare the Advanced Airlift Tactics Training Center and the Air Mobility Warfare Center, two organizations interacting with technology from different organizational archetypes. The final example is the Department of Defense Readiness Reporting System, an information technology application at the focal point of cultural change affecting not just the Air Force but the entire Department of Defense. Finally, I will conclude with a chapter on policy considerations and recommendations for the Air Force based on the Air Force religion, a balance of both people and technology, and with an eye toward the future of U.S. military operations. The primary goal is to answer three questions: is the U.S. Air Force truly a religion? If so, how should that affect its approach to technology and technological change? With an eye toward consciously building the future, how has the Air Force religion shaped the organization in the past? [The attached document is cleared by the Department of Defense for public release (OSR Case 09-S-0496).] / Ph. D.

The goal of this research project is to tell the story of acquisition expertise development within the DOD using the evolution of the Defense Acquisition University as its backdrop. It is a story about the persistent frame that claims expertise leads to acquisition success. It is about 40 plus years of competing perspectives of how best to acquire that expertise and their shaping effects. It is about technology choices amidst cultural and political conflict. It is about how budget, users, infrastructure, existing and emerging technologies, identity and geography all interrelate as elements within the technology of expertise development. Finally, it is about how at various times in the evolution of the Defense Acquisition University the technologies of tacit knowledge transfer have been elevated or diminished. / Ph. D.

The words and messages in apps are part of a conversation between people and their technology that we take part in every day. As technology becomes increasingly embedded into our daily lives, we form relationships with our devices and our apps. While we might think of these relationships as different, our behaviors and interactions with technology are still shaped by the social world, and these messages found in apps are based on existing patterns in face-to-face conversation. UX writing is the process of creating these messages in user experiences, which facilitate people's social interactions between apps and other digital products. Interacting with apps and other digital products is inherently social, and by using conversational language as a driving component of UX writing and Human-Computer Interaction, we can also cast User Experience (UX) as a type of communicative exchange between a person and an app, and therefore User Experience (UX) as conversation. Through qualitative interviews and usability testing with native and non-native English speakers, this research explores what type of language style works best for a global audience in these conversations with our apps and how we can strategically apply conversational patterns to improve the experience of users. Abstrakt Slova a zprávy v...

This dissertation uses Actor Network Theory (ANT) and Stark and Bainbridge's rational choice theory of religion to analyze an established but controversial branch of science and technology, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). Of particular interest are the cultural, and sometimes religious, assumptions that its creators have built into it. The purpose of this analysis is not to discredit SETI, but instead to show how SETI, along with other avant-garde scientific projects, is founded, motivated, and propelled by many of the same types of values and visions for the future that motivate the founders of religious groups. I further argue that the utopian zeal found in SETI and similar movements is not aberrant, but instead common, and perhaps necessary, in many early-stage projects, whether technical or spiritual, which lack a clear near-term commercial or social benefit. / Ph. D.