SGTR -- Studying Emerging Technologies: Empirical Research in a Speculative Space

这项用于培训和研究的小额赠款(SGTR)用于支持开发一项培训研究生学习新兴技术的计划。鉴于生物技术和新遗传学、信息技术和计算以及纳米技术和材料等领域的技术变革速度很快，对专门研究新兴技术的社会层面的社会科学家和人文学家的需求正在增加。国家科学技术研究院将在康奈尔大学现有的科学与技术研究博士项目(S和TS)中创建一个新兴技术的重点领域。该奖项将为两名学生提供为期三年的资助。在新的重点领域的学生将参加一个新的研究生研讨会“研究新兴技术”，参加一个先进的方法研讨会，并参加课程，参加实验室轮换，或从事其他活动，以获得适当的技术知识。每个人都将对需要积极接触技术知识的新兴技术进行实证研究项目，并帮助组织和提出关于新兴技术的社会层面的年度校园小组讨论。该计划还将包括组织一次关于研究新兴技术的年度研究研讨会。与研究任何特定的新技术不同，对“新兴技术”的研究需要理解一系列相关问题：“革命性”话语的复杂部署；实验室、专利局和投资公司不断变化的实践相互交织；技术工作者在拥抱和扩展技术革命时形成的新的“实践宇宙观”；以及对新兴技术进行研究的伦理复杂性，同时由于民族志方法论的原因，往往同时参与技术开发。这个项目试图创建一个连贯的培训和研究方案，将这些问题整合到一个连贯的理论框架中。其直接影响将是每年培训两名学生学习新兴技术。其更广泛的影响将包括制作关于“研究新兴技术”、“存档当代科学”和其他主题的新课程；赞助经验性研究项目，通过演讲和出版，将有助于更广泛的关于新兴技术的学术讨论；支持科技界和科技界之间关于新兴技术的社会层面的校园范围内的讨论；以及让科学和工程学的个别教职员工和学生参与探索新兴技术。总而言之，这些活动将使人们更广泛地认识到与新兴技术有关的问题，并将使科学和技术研究中的问题更广泛地融入科学家和工程师的工作中。

This Small Grant for Training and Research (SGTR) supports development of a program to train graduate students in study of emerging technologies. Given the rapid pace of technological change in such areas as biotechnology and the new genetics, information technology and computing, and nanotechnology and materials, demand is increasing for a cadre of social scientists and humanists specializing in the study of the social dimensions of emerging technology. The SGTR will create a focus area on emerging technologies in Cornell's existing Ph.D. program in Science & Technology Studies (S&TS). This award will provide support for two students for three years. Students in the new focus area will participate in a new graduate seminar on "Studying Emerging Technologies," take an advanced methods seminar, and take courses, participate in laboratory rotations, or engage in other activities to acquire appropriate technical knowledge. Each will conduct an empirical research project on an emerging technology that requires active engagement with the technical knowledge and help to organize and present an annual campus-wide panel discussion on social dimensions of emerging technologies. The program will also involve organizing an annual research workshop on studying emerging technologies. Unlike studies of any particular new technology, study of "emerging technologies" requires understanding a cluster of related issues: the complex deployment of "revolutionary" discourse; the intertwining of changing practices in laboratories, patent offices, and investment houses; the new "practical cosmologies" developed by technical workers as they embrace and extend technological revolutions; and the ethical complexities of conducting research about emerging technologies while often, because of ethnographic methodology, simultaneously participating in technological development. This project seeks to create a coherent training and research program integrating these issues into a coherent theoretical frame. The direct impact will be to train a particular cohort of two students per year in studying emerging technologies. Its broader impacts will include producing new courses on "studying emerging technologies," "archiving contemporary science," and other topics; sponsoring empirical research projects that, through presentation and publication, will contribute to wider scholarly discourse about emerging technologies; supporting campus-wide discussions between the scientific and technical communities and the science and technology studies community about the social dimensions of emerging technologies; and engaging individual faculty and students in the sciences and engineering in exploration of emerging technologies. Taken together, these activities will create broader awareness of issues associated with emerging technologies and will lead to wider integration of issues from science and technology studies into the work of scientists and engineers.