Making Studies in New Media Critical

Abstract

Science Studies faces new challenges in making public the societal and ethical implications of contemporary technoscience. Not only must we contend with its multidisciplinary character, and its close linkage to entrepreneurial activity, but increasingly with its distributed, even global production, and its entanglements in complex networks of intellectual property and finance. But in addition to these challenges special new problems for science studies workers are posed by the fact that the technologies of new media are integral to the production of contemporary technoscience; and although most of recent technoscience has actually been born digital, it exists in formats that are difficult to preserve and render with current technology. The materials we need to write the history of contemporary science are rapidly disappearing into the “digital dark ages.” We need new tools of “information archaeology” to address these issues. None of this will be possible unless we go beyond the traditional single-researcher framework of science studies to encourage collaborative research among science studies researchers, information archaeologists, and the scientists and engineers themselves. I will draw upon work in progress aimed at developing collaborative tools for making technoscience public and new media critical.