What Can Technology Teach us about Texts? (and Texts about Technology?)

Abstract

In history and sociology of technology, one particular article has stood the test of time and remains as a minor classic (see Pinch & Bijker, 1984). I am referring to the constructivist project applied on the one hand to scientific knowledge (the question of “fact”) and, on the other hand, to technology (the question of “artefact”). The case study chosen by the authors, Trevor Pinch and Wiebe Bijker (P&B), to illustrate their thesis was the bicycle or, more precisely, that period in the history of the bicycle that preceded the stabilized design still dominant nowadays. It was used to demonstrate points of convergence, but also of differences, between science and technology as apprehended through a constructivist approach. However, from my present perspective, the lasting value of this article lies in the way in which it makes sense of the proliferation of forms associated with the prehistory of the bicycle, roughly between 1860 and 1900. There is a lesson here for an analysis of any technology in any context, and, for this reason, the terms introduced by P&B to analyze the evolution of the bicycle remain useful. They can be easily transposed to text, especially if we approach text as a technological object, as we shall see.