Technology and Modernity: The Empirical Turn--Proposal for an International Research Workshop, November 1999

*SBR 99- 00894米萨，托马斯J（伊利诺伊理工学院）本次研讨会将汇集两个大的独立的学者社区，并将寻求创造一个新的领域，检查技术和现代性的共同建设。虽然“现代技术”一词是流行话语的主要内容，但分别最仔细地研究技术和现代性的学者在很大程度上是相互孤立的。具有哲学、人类学、文化研究和社会理论背景的学者们创造了一个精心制作的、理论密集的文献，我们可以称之为“现代性研究”。与此同时，历史学家、社会学家和某些经济学家在“技术研究”方面创造了大量基于经验的文献。“这次研讨会将面对分隔这些社区的障碍（主要是学科术语和分析水平的差异），并制定一个联合研究议程。为进行这种雄心勃勃的国际性建立工作所需的持续的智力工作，将需要事先认真筹备一个为期多天的讲习班，并开展重要的后续活动。我们正在寻求国家科学基金会的支持，使12名美国学者能够参加这项工作，我们将于1999年11月在荷兰特文特大学举办讲习班。特文特特别适合作为这些活动的中心。大学不仅有舒适，方便的会议设施，其系统哲学和STS部门在过去三年中一直在努力解决这些同样令人烦恼的问题（学科术语和分析水平），以开发一个联合研究主题“技术与现代性”。“1997年春季关于这一主题的一个学期的研讨会（由Misa协调）帮助确定了我们在这里提议的讲习班最有前途的智力问题。一个发现是，在现代性和技术研究社区中，人们越来越意识到交叉施肥的前景。旨在促进这两个社区之间国际合作的研讨会是及时的。我们相信，这样的努力不仅会对我们作为学者如何理解技术在现代世界中的地位产生影响，而且会对我们作为公民如何在社会中管理技术产生影响。

***SBR 99-00894Misa, Thomas J. (Illinois Institute of Technology)This workshop will bring together two largely-separate communities of scholars, and will seek to create a new field that examines the co-construction of technology and modernity. While the term "modern technology" is a staple of popular discourse, the scholars who have most closely examined technology and modernity, respectively, have proceeded largely in isolation from each other. Scholars with backgrounds in philosophy, anthropology, cultural studies, and social theory have created an elaborate and theoretically dense literature that we may call "modernity studies." Meanwhile, historians, sociologists, and certain economists have created a large empirically grounded literature in "technology studies." This workshop will confront the barriers that have separated these communities (principally disciplinary jargons and differences in the level of analysis) and develop a joint research agenda. The sustained intellectual work necessary for such an ambitious, international agenda-building effort will require a multi-day workshop, carefully prepared in advance, and significant follow-up activities. We are seeking NSF support to enable 12 U.S. scholars to participate in this effort.We will hold the workshop at the University of Twente, The Netherlands, in November 1999. Twente is especially well situated to be the center for these activities. Not only does the university have comfortable, accessible conference facilities, its departments of Systematic Philosophy and STS have in the last three years grappled with these same vexing issues (of disciplinary jargon and levels of analysis) in developing a joint research theme in "technology and modernity." A semester-long seminar on this theme during Spring 1997 (coordinated by Misa) helped define the most promising intellectual problems for the workshop we propose here. One finding was a growing awareness, in both the modernity and technology studies communities, of the promise of cross-fertilization. A workshop designed to catalyze international collaboration between these two communities is timely. Such an effort, we believe, will have ramifications not only for how we as scholars understand technology's place in the modern world but also for how we as citizens may manage technology in society.***