Technique sans frontières

Abstract

This research note provides an overview of recent research in Germany research centers concerning the role of technology, in its largest socio-cultural context, including how technology embeds into intellectual and daily life. At the end of the 1980s the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin, under the direction of Renatě Mayntz, Thomas Hughes and Todd La Porte, in particular, began rather intensive internationally- oriented investigation and research into LTS: "Large Technical Systems". These include the telephone network with all its underlying communications services; air traffic networks as well as other transportation systems; energy distribution; waste removal and other sanitary services. All these nsy stems and networks represent technical creations, and sociological research in the realm of techniques has only just begun systematically to examine them. Until now, this research was only sporadically coordinated with similar research being carried out in France. In Germany at the present time, the Max-Plank-Institut for Sociological Research and the Science Center in Berlin are the main centers of this research. The discussion on LTS is heavily charged with economic and management questions. In this article, however, the main emphasis of the work being done concentrates on the central question of mechanisms of transformation through expansion and widening, through apparently irreversible growth and of the "upward transformation" of interconnected technical systems, even if there are implications, naturally, concerning technological policies.