In 2015, Andy Borowitz wrote a piece for the New Yorker on the dismal state of American infrastructure in light of a mandate to build a “giant” wall.
https://installingorder.org/2019/02/17/old-new-yorker-piece-on-the-wall/
Great video worth the time to listen (about 30 mins) about the history of “public works” in the US and around the world, and the term’s gradual replacement with “infrastructure.” https:...
https://installingorder.org/2019/02/15/peter-norton-on-big-projects/
In the final post of the three part post (here are two and one), I take-on “futuring” as a way to know the future of the future. We make futures to increase our influence on our networks in...
Erik Olin Wright passes away (New York Times article): Erik Olin Wright, a Marxist sociologist who helped bring to light the complexities of social and economic classes and explored alternatives ...
https://installingorder.org/2019/02/01/erik-olin-wright-71-dies/
After Jan‘s post earlier this week, I was moved by a comments to it, namely, the idea that it is, in fact, so difficult to talk about the future of the future, and, in particular, the good comm...
https://installingorder.org/2019/01/30/31-the-future-of-the-future-post-2-of-3/
When we came up with the idea to restart the 3-1 series with a collection of posts on “the future of …”, my initial thought was to end this collection – much later this year – with … ...
https://installingorder.org/2019/01/28/3-1-the-future-of-futures/
Blog, I am back! I would like to invite you to read my, Andrzej Nowak‘s, new article The Burden of Choice, the Complexity of the World and Its Reduction: The Game of Go/Weiqi as a Practice of �...
https://installingorder.org/2019/01/26/burden-of-choice-from-ant-through-mao-to-game-of-go-and-back/
As noted in a previous post, we are doing a redux of the 3:1 series, based on our past 3:1 series and the 3:1 concept, for the year devoted to “The Future of ,” wherein we will discuss...
https://installingorder.org/2019/01/24/31-the-future-of-the-future/
After the Futures and Foresight Conference in Warwick in December, three members from the Association of Professional Futurists (APF), Andrew Curry, Wendy Schultz, and Tanja Hichert, sat down and...
https://installingorder.org/2019/01/11/podcast-recapping-the-futures-foresight-science-conference/
The blog is making some big changes in 2019: We have a new resident blogger, Matthew Spaniol of Aarhus University in Denmark; he’s a specialist in futures studies at a school of management. H...
https://installingorder.org/2019/01/04/happy-new-year-from-iso/
Originally posted on Installing (Social) Order : Proverbial “Door to Hell”, Derweze, Turkmenistan: Check out a video here. The Door to Hell is a natural gas field in Derweze (also spelled Da...
https://installingorder.org/2018/12/23/door-to-hell-42-years-later-2/
This is the kick-off to a new and improved section of the existing blog, the “Teaching STS” section, which is just been transformed to the “Teaching STS/FS” section, and each new and old ...
https://installingorder.org/2018/12/21/teaching-fs-house-of-the-future/
Originally posted on Object-Oriented Philosophy : Moderated by Dominik Finkelde, HERE.
https://installingorder.org/2018/12/14/video-of-december-1-munich-discussion-with-slavoj-zizek/
Matthew Spaniol and Nicholas Rowland just presented a paper, “Intersecting Futures Studies and STS” at the Futures & Foresight Conference in Warwick 10-11 December (presentation here). The co...
https://installingorder.org/2018/12/14/sts-at-the-futures-foresight-conference-in-warwick/
My colleague, long-time collaborator, and now co-blogger, Matthew Spaniol, just released a video about our recent paper that free and available here. The video is called “Defining Scenario” a...
https://installingorder.org/2018/12/07/defining-scenario-video/
Available here and also Review_of_Capitalization (from S&TS in 2017). * image from: https://www.ibmbigdatahub.com/blog/turning-time-money-forecasting-production-costs
https://installingorder.org/2018/12/04/review-of-muniesa-and-co-s-capitalization/
The field of futures and foresight science (FFS) has problems that science and technology studies (STS) can help to understand. Based on recent publications, insights from STS have the potentia...
https://installingorder.org/2018/11/30/using-sts-to-study-futures-studies/
Short piece pointing to research on embracing values in science in a period of ‘post-truth’ public discussion.
In a twist of robotic fate, Saudi Arabia grants citizenship to robot. See it at Science Today. Reminds me of rivers gaining a similar status.
Help us with our “Reading List” — what should we add or subtract?
Planning practices — strategic planning, scenario planning, and the like — have taken firm root in both the public and private sector. Governments roll-out security scenarios. For-profit firm...
“‘Blade Runner’s’ chillingly prescient vision of the future” offers a (brief) review of the 1982 Ridley Scott film and how much 2017 appears to reflect Scott’s portrayal of the hum...
https://installingorder.org/2017/10/06/blade-runner-is-2017/
It is bad to demand the retraction non-fraudulent papers. But why? I think the argument rests on three intuitions. First, there is a legal reason. When an editor and publisher accept a paper, the...
https://installingorder.org/2017/09/21/on-retracting-papers/
25 years after Andrew Pickering’s “Science as Practice and Culture”* was published, it was just reviewed. Helen Verran (History and Philosophy of Science, University of Melbourne) just wro...
https://installingorder.org/2017/09/15/pickering-review-in-2017/
Just out: “Mapping “the ANT multiple”: A comparative, critical and reflexive analysis” by Laur Kanger (University of Sussex Science Policy Research Unit Brighton UK; University of Tart...
See this terrific review of the interesting book, and there is a free introductory chapter for those interested: Bronwyn Parry, Beth Greenhough, Tim Brown and Isabel Dyck (eds.) Bodies Across Bo...
https://installingorder.org/2017/08/23/movement-in-body-parts/
Jennifer Terry, Attachments to War: biomedical logics and violence in twenty-first century America, looks into the nexus of war, medical treatment, and prosthetics — looks promising. And in lo...
https://installingorder.org/2017/08/23/prosthetic-war-nexus/
Another, in a long line of discussions, about how postmodernism is to blame for our ills. Please bask in the reflected glory of a few scholars to reshape the world from their desks. It is truly a...
Originally posted on Actor Network Theory : Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!
There is a paradox in clinical uncertainty management. While contemporary medical education and training dismisses prognosis in favor of diagnostic and treatment skills, prognosis is ever present...
With a trillion-ton iceberg cleaving from Antartica, and debate over the exact causes seems never to end, I wonder “what is the infrastructural equivalent of it?” One immediate answer is fo...
The original CIA report: https://www.cia.gov/…/do…/CIA-RDP86S00588R000300380001-5.PDF
https://installingorder.org/2017/06/26/cia-report-on-postmodernism/
We have written about this previously, the state of American infrastructure and the problem that is not appealing to the masses, and we can report that not a lot has changed. According to ASCE, ...
Hong Kong’s “coffin flats” from the Guardian. Take a peek at this story replete with pictures about suffocating housing infrastructure in subdivided flats.
https://installingorder.org/2017/06/09/hong-kongs-coffin-flats/
Originally posted on lukebennett13 : “The problems associated with empty properties are considerable. They attract vandalism and increase insecurity and fear. And this all reduces the value of...
Fascinating discussion about what infrastructure is and how the concept may have subtly changed over time (for example, the material and conceptual, the blueprint and the waste, etc.). Quality wo...
https://installingorder.org/2017/04/17/imagining-infastructure/
We are living in a time of intellectual fights. As STSers, we sometimes feel like being pushed back into the 1990s, only that the strange debates we had back then on “Science as Practice and Cu...
https://installingorder.org/2017/04/05/how-french-postmodernism-ruined-the-west/
With some success, I have been teaching Charles Perrow’s “Normal Accident” concept with “Engineering Disasters.” It is a show on the History Channel, which is itself an offshoot of Mod...
Just thought I would mention that I am working on a field-trip project on infrastructure that takes students on a hunt for “signals” of infrastructure in New York based on a book we discussed...
https://installingorder.org/2017/03/24/infrastructure-field-trip/
A new piece from The Conversation about security infrastructure investigating security options, including going back to the physical key as an alternative to password overload in online platform...
https://installingorder.org/2017/03/23/e-key-security-infrastructure/
We’ve talked about his many times, here, here, and here.
https://installingorder.org/2017/03/17/darkside-of-innovation/
Originally posted on Installing (Social) Order : Great ANT case for teaching: “New Zealand Grants River Personhood“ Want to take it to the next level in the classroom? challenge students to ...
https://installingorder.org/2017/03/17/new-zealand-grants-river-personhood-2/
Introduction: Infrastructural Complications Penny Harvey, Casper Bruun Jensen & Atsuro Morita Over the past decade, infrastructures have emerged as compelling sites for qualitative social researc...
https://installingorder.org/2017/03/16/new-infrastructure-paper/
A student of mine said something last week that gave me déjà vu. We completed our lessons on “social class” and the student was having difficulty with the notion of cultural capital. In...
https://installingorder.org/2017/03/15/do-search-engines-make-cultural-capital-less-valuable/
There is a growing connection between a small research area in the business school literature called “futures studies” (wherein forecasting, scenario planning, etc.) and STS. Early thinkers i...
https://installingorder.org/2017/03/13/growing-link-between-sts-and-futures-studies/
In the “Teaching STS” collection, we’ve discussed teaching lessons (with some resources) about the social construction of time a number of times related to whether or not time exists at all...
https://installingorder.org/2017/03/08/teaching-sts-construction-of-time-and-daylight-savings/
This is cool. Click here for a map of science as we know it. Reminds me of a number of topics we have discussed here, namely, digital methods, maps of submarine cables, and cartographic narrativ...
Worth checking-out: visual, psychological, and anthropological films that can be used for teaching from our friends over at Psychocultural Cinema: Despite the rich history of innovative methods ...
https://installingorder.org/2017/03/06/20-ethnographic-films-to-teach-with-2/
In a fascinating, apparently not-peer-reviewed non-article available free online here, Tommaso Venturini and Bruno Latour discuss the potential of “digital methods” for the contemporary… S...
https://installingorder.org/2017/03/05/latour-on-digital-methods-2/
The challenge of de-centering humans — especially in the traditional home of human-centricity like sociology or anthropology but also in the humanities — has been gaining attention for … So...
https://installingorder.org/2017/03/04/when-in-doubt-de-center-humans-2/