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The Sociotechnical Renaissance: Four Core Ideas for Supporters of Innovation

By Michael C. Gilbert, November 30, 2009
 

Human beings are makers. We make love. We make connections. We make trouble. We make things. We make things that make other things. We make other human beings, in fact. And often enough, we make a difference. One of the lasting ways in which we do many of these is through technology.

Most of my work of the last decade can be described as relating to my passion for technology, innovation, and social change. I'm taking the occasion of the upcoming Tech 4 Society gathering to reflect on some core concepts of this work. I offer them here in the form of simple statements intended for use by the supporters of invention and innovation, including funders, organizers, observers, critics, and even engineers and buyers of tools and services who see themselves as supporting innovation.

1. Technology is not neutral. The neutrality of technology is a popular notion, typically invoked in order to dismiss value-driven analysis from the conversation. But you probably wouldn't be reading this if you didn't believe that technologies are social and political phenomena with corresponding social and political consequences. That's the point, right? Technologies can be seen as one of society's ways of changing or reinforcing itself.
2. Technologies are systems. You can't have a car without roads, gas stations, drivers licenses or changes in labor markets and social patterns. But often, we mistakenly insist on calling the wheeled vehicle itself the only real piece of "technology" in that system. We're all susceptible to the "tyranny of the tangible" ú the phenomenon that causes us to overvalue elements that make strong sensory impressions. We get excited about widgets and much less excited about changes in business processes. This leads to massive underinvestment (of money, time, and attention) on the less tangible elements of a technological system, resulting in failed projects at best and catastrophe (ecological, social, economic) at worst.
3. Innovation is context-dependent. What is innovative in one community is mundane in another. More importantly, by providing peers, knowledge, and communities of practice, the right context turns an ordinary creative person into an inventor. By providing networks and missing sociotechnical elements of technological systems, the right context turns an isolated invention into a disseminated innovation.
4. Coolness is not innovation. That which is innovative is not always cool. More importantly, that which is cool is not always innovative. Indeed, cool can be seen as inherently conservative. If an invention is not already well on its way to adoption in certain (possibly small, probably themselves cool) circles, then it is too obscure to be cool. Even if we'd never use the actual word "cool" to define our choices, the desire for coolness is powerful. It provides us with the appearance of innovation without the inherent risks of the real thing. Mistaking coolness for innovation is far from trivial. It leads to large scale investments in promises of change that do not materialize. It causes genuine innovations, which don't tap into established tropes or status in the same way, to languish in obscurity.
    

We are in the midst of a potential sociotechnical renaissance, or perhaps more accurately, thousands of potential renaissances in hundreds of communities of practice across the globe. There have been profound contextual changes in the last twenty years, especially in communication and information, but also in fabrication, finance, and the law. These changes are empowering the maker in all of us and may well bring forth an unprecedented era of genuinely appropriate technologies. If those of us who want to see this renaissance happen to stay clear of our most common misconceptions, then we ourselves may be among its makers.
 

Ashoka: Innovators for the Public are hosting Tech 4 Society, a conference exploring technology, invention and social change, in Hyderabad, India, in February 2009. Find out more about the conference here. This blog post is an entry in their competition to find the official blogger to travel to and cover the event.