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Socio-Technical Futures Shaping the Present
The exploration of ways to conceptualize the shaping of the present by socio‐technical futures is the aim of this volume. Therefore it brings together contributions from Science and Technology Studies and Technology Assessment, which focus all on the question how socio-technical images of the future shape present processes of innovation and transformation starting from empirical case studies and generalizing specific findings or by tackling conceptual questions from the outset. A white paper of 23 authors, which aims to sensitize researchers and practitioners completes the volume.
Berlin Keys to the Sociology of Technology
This volume offers a cross-section of a good fifteen years of research in the sociology of technology and innovation at the Department of Sociology of Technology headed by Werner Rammert at the TU Berlin. All contributions in this volume were initiated or discussed there and thus bear in a certain sense a "Berlin signature" - not in the sense of a clearly delimited scientific school, but rather in the form of an open discussion group with different, but mutually related focal points. The Berlin Key, which gives it its title, imposes on all its users the program of action objectified in its mechanism: "User, if you want to take the key back to yourself after unlocking the door and go your way, you must lock the door again first. Unlike that Berlin key, the "Berlin Keys to the Sociology of Technology" presented here offer a set of keys to different but interconnected conceptual and methodological approaches in social science research on technology and innovation.
Collective Agency and Cooperation in Natural and Artificial Systems
This book brings together philosophical approaches to cooperation and collective agency with research into human-machine interaction and cooperation from engineering, robotics, computer science and AI. Bringing these so far largely unrelated fields of study together leads to a better understanding of collective agency in natural and artificial systems and will help to improve the design and performance of hybrid systems involving human and artificial agents. Modeling collective agency with the help of computer simulations promises also philosophical insights into the emergence of collective agency. The volume consists of four sections. The first section is dedicated to the concept of agency. The second section of the book turns to human-machine cooperation. The focus of the third section is the transition from cooperation to collective agency. The last section concerns the explanatory value of social simulations of collective agency in the broader framework of cultural evolution.
Cooperative Agents
Agent-based modelling on a computer appears to have a special role to play in the development of social science. It offers a means of discovering general and applicable social theory, and grounding it in precise assumptions and derivations, whilst addressing those elements of individual cognition that are central to human society. However, there are important questions to be asked and difficulties to overcome in achieving this potential. What differentiates agent-based modelling from traditional computer modelling? Which model types should be used under which circumstances? If it is appropriate to use a complex model, how can it be validated? Is social simulation research to adopt a realist ...
Socionics
This book includes contributions from an interdisciplinary field of research we call Socionics. Based on a close cooperation between sociologists and researchers from distributed artificial intelligence and multiagent systems, Socionics deals with the exploration of the emergence and dynamics of artificial social systems, agent societies, as well as hybrid man-machine societies. The aim is both to develop intelligent computer technologies by picking up theoretical concepts and methods from sociology and to improve sociological models of societies and organizations by using advanced computer technology. The 15 articles in this state-of-the-art survey combine selected contributions from sociology and informatics on the modeling, construction, and study of complex social systems with special regard to the problem of scaling multiagent systems. The discussion focuses on four specific research areas: multi-layer modeling, organization and self-organization, emergence of social structures, and paths from an agent-centered to a communication-centered perspective in modeling multiagent systems.
A Theory of Uncertainty
Using sources from classical to modern that broach the phenomenon of uncertainty and its relation to risk, this book creates a novel approach to the recognized but theoretically often unattended issue of uncertainty. Andreas Klinke develops a new, general theory of uncertainty that provides a taxonomy of categories which are deduced from a critical inventory in philosophy, social and natural sciences, and risk research. Comprising six parts, the philosophical grounding of uncertainty sets the stage for the following philosophical and social scientific accounts and explanation of four distinctive guises of uncertainty that form a taxonomic notion and rationale: ontological, epistemological, l...
Grenzen der Akteursfähigkeit
Die Soziologie hat die Grenzen der Sozialwelt traditionell eng gesteckt. Es gilt ihr als Gewissheit, dass allein Menschen zu sozialen Akteuren werden können. Aufgrund neuerer sozialtheoretischer Ansätze und empirischer Entwicklungen der Technikwissenschaften wird diese Gewissheit in den vergangenen Jahren jedoch herausgefordert und es stellt sich die Frage, ob neben Menschen auch sogenannte "soziale Maschinen" zu sozialen Akteuren werden können. Vor diesem Hintergrund besteht Florian Muhles Ziel darin, anhand sozialtheoretischer und empirischer Studien eine soziologisch reflektierte Antwort auf die Frage nach maschineller Akteursfähigkeit "sozialer" Maschinen zu geben. Dabei versteht sich das Buch als Beitrag zu einer Soziologie des Cyberspace. Es werden sowohl Bezüge zu aktuellen sozialtheoretischen Debatten um die Grenzen der Sozialwelt als auch zu medien- und techniksoziologischen Auseinandersetzungen um Interaktivität und Handlungsträgerschaft von Technik hergestellt.
Reframing the Social
Drawing extensively on the research findings of natural and social sciences both in America and Europe, Reframing the Social argues for a critical realist and systemist social ontology, designed to shed light on current debates in social theory concerning the relationship of social ontology to practical social research, and the nature of 'the social'. It explores the works of the systems theorist Mario Bunge in comparison with the approach of Niklas Luhmann and critical social systems theorists, to challenge the commonly held view that the systems-based approach is holistic in nature and necessarily downplays the role of human agency. Theoretically sophisticated and investigating the work of a theorist whose work has until now received insufficient attention in Anglo-American thought, this book will be of interest to those working in the field of social theory, as well as scholars concerned with philosophy of social science, the project of analytical sociology, and the nature of the relationship between the natural and social sciences.
Operationsroboter in Aktion
Die ersten marktfähigen Hüft- und Knieoperationsroboter weckten hohe Erwartungen. Das Versprechen lautete, die Standzeit eines Implantats werde sich verlängern, wenn ein Chirurg den Knochen maschinell hochpräzise ausfräsen kann, anstatt ihn von Hand auszuraspeln. Doch die Frage, ob ein Robotereingriff für Kranke von gesundheitlichem Nutzen ist oder diesen vielmehr schadet, löste eine Kontroverse zwischen Ingenieuren, Medizinern, Journalisten, Patienten und Richtern aus. Catarina Caetano da Rosa zeigt, wie sich Akteurs-Konstellationen herausgebildet haben, die in manchen Fällen zum Erfolg und in anderen zum Scheitern der operationstechnischen Neuerungen geführt haben: Der Versuch, industrielle Roboterlogik auf die Biologie des Menschen zu übertragen, blieb umstritten.
