Visions of Sts: Counterpoints in Science, Technology, and Society Studies

Maps interconnections between science, technology, and society in order to understand both benefits and costs.

Visions of STS brings together the views of ten leading scholars to clarify the nature of Science, Technology, and Society Studies and point toward future developments. The interdisciplinary field of STS maps out the interconnected relationships among science, technology, and society in order to better understand both the innumerable benefits as well as problematic challenges. This book, rather than presenting science and technology as autonomous entities, analyzes each contextually as societal-mediated processes that reflect cultural, political, and economic values. It contains four basic programmatic essays that deal with technological determinism, the social constructivist view, STS and policy information, and the issue of interdisciplinarity. Visions of STS also stresses more specialized perspectives of work, education, and public policy analysis, and challenges the way STS itself is pursued. Taken together, these essays offer an exciting and unusually broad overview of STS.

Stephen H. Cutcliffe is Director of the Science, Technology, and Society Program at Lehigh University and coeditor of Technology and the West and Technology and American History. Carl Mitcham is Professor of Liberal Arts and International Studies at Colorado School of Mines and author of Thinking through Technology: The Path between Engineering and Philosophy.