The Social Shaping of Technology

Abstract Studies of the Social Shaping of Technology (SST) emerged in the 1980s through a critique of the prevailing ‘technological determinism’ tradition, which had limited its scope of enquiry to monitoring the social adjustments required by technological progress.1 In contrast, SST researchers ‘problematized’ technological change by showing that it is patterned by the conditions of its creation and use, rather than developing solely according to an inner technical logic.