Science As Culture最新文献_第9页

Big Tech 大型科技股

IF 2.6 3区哲学

Science As Culture Pub Date : 2022-01-02 DOI: 10.1080/09505431.2022.2036118

K. Birch, K. Bronson

{"title":"Big Tech","authors":"K. Birch, K. Bronson","doi":"10.1080/09505431.2022.2036118","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09505431.2022.2036118","url":null,"abstract":"Big Tech is in the public and political spotlight. Usually defined as Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Google/Alphabet, and Facebook/Meta, Big Tech is becoming the watchword for corporate surveillance, monopoly, and market power. Arguably, they are the defining institutions of our day, dominating our political economies, societies, and polities as Big Oil or Big Banks did in their time. Criticism of Big Tech is increasingly evident as well, cutting across popular books, academic work, film, and journalism: examples include, Shoshana Zuboff’s (2019) book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism; recent documentaries like Social Dilemma and Agents of Chaos; and regular column inches in print media like the Financial Times and The Economist, this being particularly notable as these two are intellectual bastions of capitalism. As public, political, and policy backlash against the activities of Big Tech followed results of the 2016 US Presidential Election, the 2016 British Referendum on Europe, and the 2018 revelations about Cambridge Analytica (Zuboff, 2019), commentators have highlighted the significant loss of trust in these digital technology companies and their wares – dubbed the ‘techlash’ (Foroohar, 2019). This techlash is hardly surprising since, as Prainsack (2019) points out, Big Tech firms increasingly underpin much of our social, political, and economic worlds by providing the digital infrastructure on which we rely to live our lives. Consequently, governments and others around the world are increasingly turning their regulatory gaze onto Big Tech, leading to a surge in policy and legislative measures to curb their social and market power. Big Tech has been the subject of critical political investigations, like the recent US Congressional Hearings on Online Platforms and Market Power, or the International Grand Committee on Big Data, Privacy and Democracy. Big Tech has also been the target of specific policy action, like the European Union’s (EU) recently passed Digital Markets Act (DMA), which seeks to address the","PeriodicalId":47064,"journal":{"name":"Science As Culture","volume":"31 1","pages":"1 - 14"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48610814","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 22

Big Tech Meets Big Ag: Diversifying Epistemologies of Data and Power 大科技与大Ag相遇：数据和权力的多样化认识

IF 2.6 3区哲学

Science As Culture Pub Date : 2022-01-02 DOI: 10.1080/09505431.2021.1986692

K. Bronson, Phoebe Sengers

{"title":"Big Tech Meets Big Ag: Diversifying Epistemologies of Data and Power","authors":"K. Bronson, Phoebe Sengers","doi":"10.1080/09505431.2021.1986692","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09505431.2021.1986692","url":null,"abstract":"Since 2018, there has been a public backlash against Big Tech – notably against Facebook and Google which have been labeled as ‘ethical miscreants’ that abuse personal data collected from internet use for corporate profit (Solon, 2017; Zuboff, 2019). Less visible both in terms of popular outcry and critical scholarship are some of the largest and longest-standing oligopolistic corporations in North America – big agribusinesses – which increasingly center their business models on the collection and processing of data. For example, every John Deere tractor manufactured today is a piece equipment containing built-in sensors that collect and stream data about soil and crop conditions. Deere & Company has signed 13 legal agreements with seed/chemical corporations, such as Bayer/Monsanto, that allow for data transfer between tractors and other input supply (e.g. chemicals) corporations. As large agribusiness companies become data powerhouses, critical scholarship and activism has not kept up. Compared to critical scholarly attention to big data in other sectors, there is a small, although rapidly growing, cohort of critical scholars working on agricultural big data (see Wolf and Wood, 1997; Driessen and Heutinck, 2015; Carolan 2017; Eastwood et al., 2017; Klerkx et al., 2019; Bronson, 2019). Moreover, the tremendous amount of public activism against big data and algorithms in other sectors has not been applied to agribusinesses – those historically dealing in machinery, seeds and chemicals – whom we can increasingly read as data companies. In this paper, we explore the intersection of Big Tech and big agribusiness. More broadly, we illustrate how an STS lens can be leveraged to broaden and deepen understandings of Big Tech by analyzing and comparing how Big","PeriodicalId":47064,"journal":{"name":"Science As Culture","volume":"111 4","pages":"15 - 28"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41288653","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 16

The Role of US Policymaking in the Emergence of a Digital Health Assemblage 美国政策制定在数字健康组合出现中的作用

IF 2.6 3区哲学

Science As Culture Pub Date : 2022-01-02 DOI: 10.1080/09505431.2021.2025214

Elisa Lievevrouw, L. Marelli, I. van Hoyweghen

{"title":"The Role of US Policymaking in the Emergence of a Digital Health Assemblage","authors":"Elisa Lievevrouw, L. Marelli, I. van Hoyweghen","doi":"10.1080/09505431.2021.2025214","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09505431.2021.2025214","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Promising to improve the quality of care while decreasing healthcare costs, digital health technologies (DHT) are welcomed as a solution to the challenges increasingly faced by healthcare systems in the global north. In recent years, tech developers, consultants, policymakers, and researchers in the US have heralded Big Tech entrepreneurs as driving the emergence of these technologies. However, apart from Silicon Valley visions of DHT, there are a range of regulations, devices, institutions, and practices constituting the DHT assemblage in the US. These include US policies following the global financial crisis of 2008 – such as the US' monetary policy, and the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH Act) – and the enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). Accordingly, a more granular approach is required to understand the rise of DHT beyond these stereotypical ‘Silicon Valley’ accounts of the emergence of disruptive digital technologies. Careful attention on various, seemingly unrelated, policymaking events reveals how the unintended alignment of these US policy visions, regulations, devices, institutions, and practices have played an instrumental role in the successful emergence of DHT, while also impacting ongoing global developments of these technologies.","PeriodicalId":47064,"journal":{"name":"Science As Culture","volume":"31 1","pages":"72 - 91"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46601789","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 1

Interstitial Silences in Sociotechnical Change: The Case of Genetically Modified ‘Tearless’ Onions 社会技术变革中的间质沉默——以转基因“无泪”洋葱为例

IF 2.6 3区哲学

Science As Culture Pub Date : 2021-12-27 DOI: 10.1080/09505431.2021.2019214

S. Edwards, S. Vallance, R. Montgomery

{"title":"Interstitial Silences in Sociotechnical Change: The Case of Genetically Modified ‘Tearless’ Onions","authors":"S. Edwards, S. Vallance, R. Montgomery","doi":"10.1080/09505431.2021.2019214","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09505431.2021.2019214","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Genetically modified (GM) ‘tearless’ onions were developed in a New Zealand laboratory facility in 2007, but efforts to initiate a field test were unsuccessful, and by 2012 the project had been almost completely dismantled. The overall trajectory of this project was influenced by a collaboration between teams of scientists in Japan and New Zealand; commercial pressures in the New Zealand science system; different regulatory processes that must be followed for indoor versus outdoor research; and activists who detected a containment breach in a GM Brassicas field test. The combination of factors that led to the ultimate demise of GM tearless onions also reveals that some aspects of GM research are not subject to debate, but these would be missing from our analysis if we had only focused on what is present in this controversy. Hence, shifting attention to what is absent from controversy reveals ‘interstitial silences’: matters that lie beyond the boundaries of public debate, but are nevertheless part of the overall trajectory of sociotechnical change. An attention to interstitial silences contributes to an emerging literature on the ecologies of participation by complexifying understandings of what is being negotiated in these participatory spaces. Future research in this area should therefore search for interstitial silences, and also explore how understandings of spatial complexity could be used to further reimagine the wider spaces of participation through which trajectories of sociotechnical change are negotiated.","PeriodicalId":47064,"journal":{"name":"Science As Culture","volume":"31 1","pages":"212 - 234"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2021-12-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46524680","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

A Philosophical Anthropology of Order Itself 秩序本身的哲学人类学

IF 2.6 3区哲学

Science As Culture Pub Date : 2021-12-10 DOI: 10.1080/09505431.2021.2012649

Jonathan Wald

引用次数: 0

It Takes Two to Techno-Tango: An Analysis of a Close Embrace Between Google/Apple and the EU in Fighting the Pandemic Through Contact Tracing Apps 技术探戈需要两个人：分析谷歌/苹果与欧盟在通过接触者追踪应用抗击疫情方面的紧密合作

IF 2.6 3区哲学

Science As Culture Pub Date : 2021-11-23 DOI: 10.1080/09505431.2021.1999403

M. Lanzing, Elisa Lievevrouw, L. Siffels

引用次数: 7

Big Tech’s ‘Voracious Appetite,’ or Entrepreneurs Who Dream of Acquisition? Regulation and the Interpenetration of Corporate Scales 科技巨头的“贪婪胃口”，还是梦想被收购的企业家?规制与企业规模的相互渗透

IF 2.6 3区哲学

Science As Culture Pub Date : 2021-11-22 DOI: 10.1080/09505431.2021.2000597

Jacob Hellman

{"title":"Big Tech’s ‘Voracious Appetite,’ or Entrepreneurs Who Dream of Acquisition? Regulation and the Interpenetration of Corporate Scales","authors":"Jacob Hellman","doi":"10.1080/09505431.2021.2000597","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09505431.2021.2000597","url":null,"abstract":"At a conference of technology entrepreneurs in 2015, a moderator introduced a panel of executives in charge of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) for Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Yahoo. ‘We put it on the Eventbrite invitation: “What one question do you want answered?,”’ he announced. ‘By far, the audience’s most common response was “how do we get on your radar?”’ (Foundersuite, 2015). This event was not atypical; law firms who conduct and profit from corporate acquisitions host such panels regularly, and they archive them on YouTube for consumption by hopeful entrepreneurs everywhere. They indicate that dominant technology firms have become so not by internal expansion alone, but also by acquiring other firms. Between 2015 and 2020, Amazon made 42 acquisitions; Apple 33; Facebook 21; Google (Alphabet) 48; and Microsoft 53 (Motta and Peitz, 2020, citing multiple sources). These Big Tech companies, colloquially referenced as GAFAM, and their acquisitions, have come under public and regulatory scrutiny for their anti-competitive effects. What is rarely recognized is that Big Tech’s tendency to acquire startups and absorb their intellectual property, workers, and user base owes not only to its own ‘voracious appetite,’ as both the popular press and scholars describe it (Tiku, 2017; Glick et al., 2021). This tendency is also driven by the supply side, as it were, in that many founders of technology startups – and their investors – want to get acquired. This paper problematizes a popular but increasingly anachronistic view of competition which holds that entrepreneurs invent new products to win market share from incumbents. In the contemporary technology sector, this idealized process is often short-circuited; it is now common for startups to develop products which deliberately aim to compliment or enhance the offerings of established companies. The goal of many startups is not to compete with, but to get incorporated into, Big Tech. This current reality","PeriodicalId":47064,"journal":{"name":"Science As Culture","volume":"31 1","pages":"149 - 161"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2021-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41437323","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 3

Democratising Monograph Publishing or Preying on Researchers? Scholarly Recognition and Global ‘Credibility Economies’ 专著出版民主化还是掠夺研究人员?学术认可与全球“诚信经济”

IF 2.6 3区哲学

Science As Culture Pub Date : 2021-11-19 DOI: 10.1080/09505431.2021.2005562

David Mills, N. Robinson

{"title":"Democratising Monograph Publishing or Preying on Researchers? Scholarly Recognition and Global ‘Credibility Economies’","authors":"David Mills, N. Robinson","doi":"10.1080/09505431.2021.2005562","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09505431.2021.2005562","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT As the global university sector continues to expand, ever more academic work is being published, including growing numbers of academic monographs. Digital technologies open up opportunities for publishers to reach new academic communities. Drawing on interviews with authors and publishers, case-studies of two companies - Lambert Academic Publishing (Lambert) and Cambridge Scholars Publishing (CSP) - interrogate their inclusive, author-centred visions. Conceptualisations of academic ‘credibility economies' strain to account for the different rationales academics have for publishing their work across a fragmented and multipolar global research system. Work has tended to focus on researchers' strategies for accumulating and managing credibility, rather than the structural blockages to, and the geographical constraints on, the flow of academic credibility. For researchers working at the margins of existing credibility economies, publishing an academic monograph is also about gaining global visibility and recognition. Promising to democratise publishing, the two publishers have both been accused of ‘predatory' business practices. In response, CSP has sought to accumulate scholarly credibility, whilst Lambert rejects what it calls ‘traditional' approaches to evaluating reputation and legitimacy. The two case-studies support a postcolonial critique of the ‘predatory publishing’ discourse, highlighting the exclusions and effacements enacted by the global academic publishing ecosystem.","PeriodicalId":47064,"journal":{"name":"Science As Culture","volume":"31 1","pages":"187 - 211"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2021-11-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47889703","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 1

Re-imagining The Space Age: Early Satellite Development from Earthly Fieldwork Practice 重新想象太空时代:从地球实地工作实践的早期卫星发展

IF 2.6 3区哲学

Science As Culture Pub Date : 2021-11-16 DOI: 10.1080/09505431.2021.2001451

Gemma Cirac-Claveras

{"title":"Re-imagining The Space Age: Early Satellite Development from Earthly Fieldwork Practice","authors":"Gemma Cirac-Claveras","doi":"10.1080/09505431.2021.2001451","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09505431.2021.2001451","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Imagining space technology has been influenced by (usually American-centred) turning points in rocketry, launchers, space exploration and human spaceflight: principally in terms of techno-bureaucratic Big Science products embedded in Cold War rivalry, military and prestige objectives. While this representation is useful to understand many developments of the space age, it has tended to downplay the role of natural history practices of data collection and interpretation in the development of space technology. The notion of sociotechnical imaginary helps to reveal a more complex and complete understanding of the history of space technology. Between 1967 and 1973, the vision of the French remote-sensing satellite as both enabled by and an extension of aircraft photo-interpretation helped to shape scientific and technological expectations of remote-sensing technology. In turn, the practices, values, and visions of aircraft photo-interpreters informed the development of satellite remote-sensing work. In particular, the fieldwork-driven research mode, focusing on data collection and field observations, was an important part of satellite technology development –a tie which remains strong today. Approaching remote-sensing satellite technology through historical research not only suggests a particular way of imagining space technology within the tradition of field science practices, discourses, and history, but also allows us to reflect on the power and limitations of prevalent imaginaries to fully understand the space age and its place in history.","PeriodicalId":47064,"journal":{"name":"Science As Culture","volume":"31 1","pages":"163 - 186"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2021-11-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46323030","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 1

Economies of Virtue: The Circulation of ‘Ethics’ in Big Tech 美德经济:大型科技公司“伦理”的循环

IF 2.6 3区哲学

Science As Culture Pub Date : 2021-11-04 DOI: 10.1080/09505431.2021.1990875

Thao Phan, Jake Goldenfein, Monique Mann, D. Kuch

引用次数: 20