On popularizing Science & Technology Studies…
So, I spent six years of my life getting trained to be part of a priesthood, and like any priesthood, mine is pretty particular about holding Supreme Knowledge close to its vest (after all, the only thing that makes members of a priesthood special is that they have ways of knowing stuff that others don’t). One of the odd things about some factions of the Science Studies world (and yes, I say some – it’s a pretty balkanized place) is their massive discomfort with the idea of being too loose with their theoretical insights. It’s a conservatism borne out of ten years of intellectual siege, as well as a knowledge that a sophisticated understanding of how knowledge is produced could be pretty dangerous in the wrong hands (though, as Josh Marshall explains, it might be too late).
With that in mind, I’ve been particularly impressed with what Alex Pang’s been doing over on his (recently-bylined) blog at Red Herring. He’s had the gig for a year now and while it’s ostensibly a blog about future trends, what he’s fundamentally doing is popularizing Science Studies ideas and applying them to contemporary situations. This isn’t dumbing-down, it’s distillation, dropping book references left and right and offering accessible ways into STS scholarship for his readers. Consider today’s entry:
It retrospect, it now seems that much of the 19th century was a long experiment in changing our perceptions of space and time. Cultural historian Wolfgang Schivelbusch argued that rail travel affected the way Europeans thought about space and geography, and that the telegraph and electric light promoted a new view (metaphorically and literally) of urban space.
Stephen Kern, in his brilliant but controversial book The Culture of Time and Space, argued that the growth of news and mass media, rapid travel by train and steamship, telegraph and telephone, mass migration, and avant-garde art movements like Futurism, all dramatically changed European perceptions of space and time around the turn of the last century. Space seemed more fractured, with fewer parts connecting or blending into each other; time was experienced as disjointed and discontinuous. It wasn’t just Picasso or Marinetti who had this experience, Kern contends: millions had their perceptions of space and time reworked, thanks in large part to technology.
He’s bringing Science Studies to a larger audience, and reading his work there for months is one of the inspirations for my current project of daily postings. Once I hit my stride and find my voice, I only hope it’s as clear and accessible as his…