Socio-Technical Practices of Digital Technology and Innovation

This research addresses how new and emerging technologies are used to mediate social, political, and economic relations, and the kinds of techno-futures they are building. It focuses on the socio-technical practices of non-state actors who produce and distribute digital technologies across regions. The project will fund training for undergraduate and graduate students in Science and Technology Studies (STS).

It will contribute to the public’s understanding of how AI, facial recognition, Internet of Things, etc. are becoming embedded into the everyday world. The findings will be of interest to innovation and technology policy makers, technology users, and educators.

The research is conducted primarily through multi-sited ethnography along with discourse analyses, focus groups, and artifact analyses. It seeks to answer the questions: 1) who is at forefront in the design, manufacture, and distribution of AI, computing hardware, and data flows, particularly outside state-sponsored activities? and 2) what are the socio-technical practices governing these processes?

Researchers will examine the commercial activities linking specific technologies to consumers, including the constellation of software and hardware that establish cross-regional data flows. It will focus on networks of entrepreneurs, makers, manufacturers, and investors who actively build and circulate personal/consumer technologies as well as those working in the startup ecosystem of agriculture and finance.

The research contributes to STS scholarship on techno-politics as well as histories of digital technology and critical computing research.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.