Interstitial Instruments

Abstract

Somewhere between science and technology, between theory and experiment, between research, development and production, integral to all these activities but rarely highlighted by the categories through which we approach them, scientific instruments often slip through the cracks of science studies. This book joins recent calls to recognize the independent and generative rôle of instruments, and focuses attention on a particularly elusive facet of modern instrumentation. 1 Its quarry are 'researchtechnologies' and the figures who have created them. Building on Terry Shinn's use of the concept in earlier studies, here Joerges and Shinn highlight the significance of a kind of instrumentation that emerges at the interfaces of science and industry. Research-technologies are devices that are designed to be generic, able to be invested with new functions and used by different groups. Facilitating both the production of science and the production of other goods, they are potentially lucrative both cognitively and commercially. If the instruments are fruitful on several fronts, and thereby capable of sustaining significant developmental enterprise, the people who design and promote them are also likely to follow career paths and publication strategies that cross disciplines and switch between academic and industrial or commercial contexts. Jesse Beams and his ultracentrifuges -bringing new techniques within the reach of a great range of physical and biological investigations -are models of this kind of career and instrument. 2 The present volume explores the emergence of specific research-technologies in a number of contexts and scientific fields, but is also animated by the broader tasks of developing an adequate sociological characterization of the endeavour, and of describing the historical emergence of a research-technology movement. Of course, it is not unusual to regard boundary-crossing to be an essential feature of much innovative

Datenwissenschaften und Gesellschaft

“…In Zwischenräumen zirkulieren und koexistieren somit verschiedene Begriffe, die als boundary objects f lexibel und adaptiv sind, um mit den jeweiligen ›Sprachen‹ der verschiedenen Felder kompatibel zu sein. Grenzobjekte haben in diesem Sinne eine zwischenräumliche Funktion (Staley 2002), indem sie verschiedene Felder über Grenzen hinweg verknüpfen und so den Austausch von Informationen und Wissen ermöglichen. Wie das Beispiel übergreifender Forschungskollaborationen zeigt, werden auch Grenzorganisationen geschaffen, die Logiken verschiedener Felder integrieren und somit zur Dauerhaftigkeit zwischenräumlicher Phänomene beitragen.…”

The Triple Helix and New Production of Knowledge

“…A second treatise, Re-Thinking Science, by Helga Nowotny, Michael Gibbons and Peter Scott, has recently appeared. 4 For my study, I limited quantitative tabulations to references made to the first book, by Gibbons et al For the period 1995 to June 1999, a total of 98 references were made to the book: 1995 (8), 1996 (16), 1997 (15), 1998 (30), 1999 (29). The number of references for the first six months of 1999 already equals those for 1998; the total (not including self-citations) from 1995 to July 2002 is 266 citations.…”

“…They stand 'in-between' orthodox professions and bodies, and are thereby interstitial. 29 They both sustain instituted differentiations and divisions of labour and violate them. Research-technology, an ordinary albeit often un-noticed feature of near history and contemporary life, is in some key respects emblematic of what the Triple Helix and New Production of Knowledge seek in their different ways to grasp.…”