Content area
Abstract
This study reveals the mechanisms by which expectation statements protect and even demand activities that together shape technology. It consists of three parts. In the first part it is argued that promises and expectations play a role in every phase and at every level of innovation processes. Promises and expectations are an integral part of technological developments, somewhat neglected by social studies of technology. Yet they are becoming more important due to a 'strategic turn' in industrial and in policy circles.
In the second part, dynamics of expectations are explored in three case studies at different levels of analysis. At the micro level an R&D-project at AKZO Company is studied, where expectations shape the research agenda and protect the project. At the meso level the rise of membrane technology is analysed as the emergence of a social world around the promise of a possible future technology. At the cultural level the dynamics of the promise of technology in general in western culture is studied and illustrated by the world-wide race for High Definition-TV.
The central claim of this study is that promises are converted into requirements at different, yet interconnected levels. In the third part, a theory of construction by expectations is developed, compared and contrasted with existing (social) theories of technical change, viz. the quasi-evolutionary model and actor-network theory. The phenomena studied and perspectives developed are important for social theory in general. Promising Technology shows how the making of the present is rooted in the future.