Preface

Summary

During a stay from 1998-2000 as research fellow at the University of Twente, Enschede, the Netherlands, I participated in the so-called “Mumford-program” – a project to stimulate and co-ordinate intellectual collaboration on the spot between various strands of Science and Technology Studies: from philosophy, sociology, and history of science and technology up to research policy and management studies. This volume, discussing the analytical and normative consequences of (conceiving) technology and technological artifacts as agents, is one of the project's principal results. Accordingly, the contributing authors are (or were) all engaged with the University of Twente.

Earlier versions of the contributions to this volume were extensively discussed in a commonworkshopwith Emilie Gomart andKnut Sørensen as external discussants. I would like to thank both of them for their stimulating comments and critical remarks. In addition, different chapterswere reviewed seperatelyby experts:DonaldMacKenzie (Back totheDrawing Board), David Hess (Artifacts as Social Agents), Adele Clarke (Diversity and Distributed Agency in the Design and Use of MedicalVideo-Communication Technologies), Annemarie Mol (Choices and Choosing in Cancer Genetics), Andrew Feenberg (Artifacts and Attachment), Sven Kesselring (Taking the Socio- Technical Seriously), Bryan Wynne (Trapped in the Duality of Structure), and John Law (The Cultural Politics of Prenatal Screening). We are grateful for their encouraging remarks and helpful criticisms, which improved the original drafts substantially. DickPels, Tsjalling Swierstra, andNilDisco commented on the earlier versions of the introduction and the epilogue. Their persistent support helped me overcome moments of hesitation.

Finally, I would like to thank George Hall and Nil Disco for their careful corrections of the English, and Maarten Zeehandelaar for his conscientious compilation of the index.