Making a show of it: Reading demonstrations of empty government innovation through the metaphor of façade.

Abstract

This article examines meaning-making in a governmental technology demonstration, and its significance in the production of a durable artifice of innovation. STS literature has largely engaged with technology demonstrations in the context of commercial technology products, and through the lens of public knowledge-making: as events that elicit credence in matters-of-fact. I contribute to this discussion by turning attention towards a new context, governmental innovation, and approaching the format, not through its epistemics, but rather its aesthetic and affective registers. Over the course of a project aimed at building a governmental software system called the AuroraAI Network, to be used for the empowerment of welfare subjects, the Department of Government ICT at the Finnish Ministry of Finance produced a series of four highly theatrical events that sought to demonstrate the development of the AI system. Using social-semiotic performance analysis, I analyse these events as a kind of façade, one that presents the trappings of technology demonstration, but rather than advancing specific technical matters-of-fact, produces an affective and aesthetic sensibility of government innovation. By mobilizing the metaphor of façade, this research shows how empty innovation is made durable and successful.