jlcohoon Annotations

What questions or elaborations do you have about this artifact?

Friday, August 14, 2020 - 12:36pm

responding to Dan Santos's post here: https://stsinfrastructures.org/annotations/user/599/artifact/5089

My research focuses on open science and the transparency movement in academia (especially as it relates to technology), so Dan's work on democratizing biotechnology sounded familiar to me in many ways. I'd love to hear more about why the biotechnologists think democracy in their field is important and how they could characterize the state of the field now. In the open science realm, we see open advocates painting a picture of science as in need of improvement because we could be more efficient or be more creative or have higher quality research if we were more open. What "improvements"/state change are the biotechnologists seeking for their field? What values do biotechologists for democracy hold (other than a belief in democracy)? Why are they using the term "democratize" in the first place—what does it mean to them?

The term techno-optimism is new to me, but seems like it would apply to academic open science as well. What does that term mean for you and how do you see it in your data? Among open science advocates, there is a common perspective that "we have the technology" and, therefore, "we can be the open society we've always needed to be" (liberal paraphrasing there). I've been personally struggling with thoughtfully and respectfully engaging that perspective with theories and commmentary on technological determinism. Assuming you have the same struggle, how have you been dealing with analysis and reporting when your studied population seems to follow a path that STS has marked as naive?

As a last note, should it be helpful, the discourses that I'm relying on most in my own research (planning) are structuration theory, value sensitive design, and design with intent/persuasive technology. I'd be happy to swap bibliographies or just chat about sources!

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