Black box systems | |
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System | |
Black box, Oracle machine | |
Methods and techniques | |
Black-box testing, Blackboxing | |
Related techniques | |
Feed forward, Obfuscation, Pattern recognition, White box, White-box testing, Gray-box testing, System identification | |
Fundamentals | |
A priori information, Control systems, Open systems, Operations research, Thermodynamic systems | |
In science studies, the social process of blackboxing is based on the abstract notion of a black box. To cite Bruno Latour, blackboxing is "the way scientific and technical work is made invisible by its own success. When a machine runs efficiently, when a matter of fact is settled, one need focus only on its inputs and outputs and not on its internal complexity. Thus, paradoxically, the more science and technology succeed, the more opaque and obscure they become." [1]
Social constructivist approaches to science and technology studies, such as social construction of technology (SCOT) often revolve around "opening the black box", or attempting to understand the internal workings of a given system. [2] This allows the investigator to find what empirical models of technical change that explain the specific events forming the technology. The social constructivist conception of black boxing doesn't delineate the physical components hidden inside an apparent whole; rather, what is black-boxed are associations, various actors from which the box is composed. Opening the hood of an electric car, for example, reveals only mechanical components. Batteries, communicators, and other specialized parts become apparent. Social constructivists "opening" the black box of an electric car would find Tesla and lithium mining. Another example of blackboxing in modern society is Uber's pricing system. Users of the ride share app don't know what causes prices to appear as they are, they are just expected to assume that there is a valid reason for any given price. [3]
The concept of the black box is also important in actor–network theory as it relates to simplification. As Michel Callon notes, an actor-network is a system of discrete entities or nodes, while the reality that it represents is theoretically infinite. Therefore, in order to describe something in terms of an actor-network, complex systems must be simplified down to individual nodes, ignoring their internal workings and focusing only on their interactions with other nodes within the network. However, if the simplified "black box" insufficiently models the system in question, it must be opened, creating a "swarm of new actors." [4]
Theorist Clay Spinuzzi points out that this simplification creates problems when “opening” a black box if a breakdown occurs. Investigating a malfunctioning black box would then mean checking each individual node of a system that once appearing as a singular whole. ”Instead of the simple inputs and outputs that some activity theorists have envisioned linking the component activity systems,” Spinuzzi writes, “those systems overlap, blur, and interact in unpredictable and unstable ways”. [5] Spinuzzi notes that in most cases self-regulating black boxes can’t propagate because the opaque internal work is too extempore and ad hoc to work on a broad scale.
Black-boxing as an approach has been criticized by scholars such as Langdon Winner for being excessively formulaic in method and too narrow in focus. [6] R.H. Lossin also critiques black-boxes as a transposition of Marx’s use-value, where the ‘dead labor’ embedded into objects is transformed into a Latourean conception of neutral inputs and outputs. [7] Lossin sees the narrative of black boxes as something that foregrounds human and sociological activity into a mere backdrop. This reading finds any class discrepancy reduced to a flat and unending web of technical entanglements.
Science studies is an interdisciplinary research area that seeks to situate scientific expertise in broad social, historical, and philosophical contexts. It uses various methods to analyze the production, representation and reception of scientific knowledge and its epistemic and semiotic role.
Bruno Latour was a French philosopher, anthropologist and sociologist. He was especially known for his work in the field of science and technology studies (STS). After teaching at the École des Mines de Paris from 1982 to 2006, he became professor at Sciences Po Paris (2006–2017), where he was the scientific director of the Sciences Po Medialab. He retired from several university activities in 2017. He was also a Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics.
Science and technology studies (STS) or science, technology, and society is an interdisciplinary field that examines the creation, development, and consequences of science and technology in their historical, cultural, and social contexts.
Actor–network theory (ANT) is a theoretical and methodological approach to social theory where everything in the social and natural worlds exists in constantly shifting networks of relationships. It posits that nothing exists outside those relationships. All the factors involved in a social situation are on the same level, and thus there are no external social forces beyond what and how the network participants interact at present. Thus, objects, ideas, processes, and any other relevant factors are seen as just as important in creating social situations as humans.
The sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) is the study of science as a social activity, especially dealing with "the social conditions and effects of science, and with the social structures and processes of scientific activity." The sociology of scientific ignorance (SSI) is complementary to the sociology of scientific knowledge. For comparison, the sociology of knowledge studies the impact of human knowledge and the prevailing ideas on societies and relations between knowledge and the social context within which it arises.
The strong programme or strong sociology is a variety of the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) particularly associated with David Bloor, Barry Barnes, Harry Collins, Donald A. MacKenzie, and John Henry. The strong programme's influence on science and technology studies is credited as being unparalleled. The largely Edinburgh-based school of thought aims to illustrate how the existence of a scientific community, bound together by allegiance to a shared paradigm, is a prerequisite for normal scientific activity.
Social construction of technology (SCOT) is a theory within the field of science and technology studies. Advocates of SCOT—that is, social constructivists—argue that technology does not determine human action, but that rather, human action shapes technology. They also argue that the ways a technology is used cannot be understood without understanding how that technology is embedded in its social context. SCOT is a response to technological determinism and is sometimes known as technological constructivism.
Theories of technological change and innovation attempt to explain the factors that shape technological innovation as well as the impact of technology on society and culture. Some of the most contemporary theories of technological change reject two of the previous views: the linear model of technological innovation and other, the technological determinism. To challenge the linear model, some of today's theories of technological change and innovation point to the history of technology, where they find evidence that technological innovation often gives rise to new scientific fields, and emphasizes the important role that social networks and cultural values play in creating and shaping technological artifacts. To challenge the so-called "technological determinism", today's theories of technological change emphasize the scope of the need of technical choice, which they find to be greater than most laypeople can realize; as scientists in philosophy of science, and further science and technology often like to say about this "It could have been different." For this reason, theorists who take these positions often argue that a greater public involvement in technological decision-making is desired.
Michel Callon is a professor of sociology at the École des mines de Paris and member of the Centre de sociologie de l'innovation. He is an author in the field of Science and Technology Studies and one of the leading proponents of actor–network theory (ANT) with Bruno Latour.
The concept of an obligatory passage point (OPP) was developed by sociologist Michel Callon in a seminal contribution to actor–network theory: Callon, Michel (1986), "Elements of a sociology of translation: Domestication of the Scallops and the Fishermen of St Brieuc Bay". In John Law (Ed.), Power, Action and Belief: A New Sociology of Knowledge? London, Routledge: 196–233.
John Law, is a sociologist and science and technology studies scholar, currently on the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Open University. Law coined the term Actor-Network Theory (ANT) in 1992 when synthesising work done with colleagues at the Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation.
Wiebe E. Bijker is a Dutch professor Emeritus, former chair of the Department of Social Science and Technology at Maastricht University in the Netherlands.
According to Robin A. Williams and David Edge (1996), "Central to social shaping of technology (SST) is the concept that there are choices inherent in both the design of individual artifacts and systems, and in the direction or trajectory of innovation programs."
Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society (ISBN 0-674-79291-2) is a seminal book by French philosopher, anthropologist and sociologist Bruno Latour first published in 1987. It is written in a textbook style, proposes an approach to the empirical study of science and technology, and is considered a canonical application of actor-network theory. It also entertains ontological conceptions and theoretical discussions making it a research monograph and not a methodological handbook per se.
The Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation is a research center at the Mines Paris – PSL, France, and a research unit affiliated to the French National Centre for Scientific Research.
Trevor J. Pinch was a British sociologist, part-time musician and chair of the science and technology studies department at Cornell University. In 2018, he won the J.D. Bernal Prize from the Society for Social Studies of Science for "distinguished contributions to Science and Technology Studies over the course of [a] career."
Technology dynamics is broad and relatively new scientific field that has been developed in the framework of the postwar science and technology studies field. It studies the process of technological change. Under the field of Technology Dynamics the process of technological change is explained by taking into account influences from "internal factors" as well as from "external factors". Internal factors relate technological change to unsolved technical problems and the established modes of solving technological problems and external factors relate it to various (changing) characteristics of the social environment, in which a particular technology is embedded.
Michael Joseph Mulkay is a retired British sociologist of science.
Engineering studies is an interdisciplinary branch of social sciences and humanities devoted to the study of engineers and their activities, often considered a part of science and technology studies (STS), and intersecting with and drawing from engineering education research. Studying engineers refers among other to the history and the sociology of their profession, its institutionalization and organization, the social composition and structure of the population of engineers, their training, their trajectory, etc. A subfield is for instance Women in engineering. Studying engineering refers to the study of engineering activities and practices, their knowledge and ontologies, their role into the society, their engagement.
Madeleine Akrich is a French sociologist of technology. She served as the director of the Center for the Sociology of Innovation at Mines ParisTech from 2003 to 2013. She is known for developing actor–network theory (ANT) with Bruno Latour, Michel Callon, John Law and others.