Technopolitics in a Twilight Civilization

Abstract

In the 2020 Prague Virtual Conference of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S), Langdon Winner was awarded the society’s John D. Bernal Prize jointly with Sharon Traweek. The Bernal Prize is awarded annually to individuals who have made distinguished contributions to the field of STS. Prize recipients include founders of the field of STS, along with outstanding scholars who have devoted their careers to the understanding of the social dimensions of science and technology. The following paper describes the significance of several recurrent figures in Winner’s writings about autonomous technologies, and their importance in generating better readings of his corpus, including his Bernal Prize lecture.