Unravelling:The dynamics of technological decline

There is a growing recognition in the academic, policy and activist worlds of an urgency to navigate the current climate crisis by refusing to support production and use of certain technologies and infrastructures that are not environmentally sustainable (anymore). This research may be of relevance to scholars, policy-makers and anyone else curious of reading about why some technologies remain abandoned and do not return, while others do. This is a study of three historical cases of decline of technologies: the incandescent light bulb in the EU, cloud seeding in the US, and the Ural computer in Soviet Russia. The research presents an approach to trace, make sense and, possibly, act on technological decline. In the dissertation decline is conceptualised as “unravelling”, as related competences become less used, related materials are harder to come by, and related meanings turn outdated. Six ideal-type pathways for the outcome of unravelling are formulated

Unravelling: The dynamics of technological decline

There is a growing recognition in the academic, policy and activist worlds of an urgency to navigate the current climate crisis by refusing to support production and use of certain technologies and infrastructures that are not environmentally sustainable (anymore). This research may be of relevance to scholars, policy-makers and anyone else curious of reading about why some technologies remain abandoned and do not return, while others do. This is a study of three historical cases of decline of technologies: the incandescent light bulb in the EU, cloud seeding in the US, and the Ural computer in Soviet Russia. The research presents an approach to trace, make sense and, possibly, act on technological decline. In the dissertation decline is conceptualised as “unravelling”, as related competences become less used, related materials are harder to come by, and related meanings turn outdated. Six ideal-type pathways for the outcome of unravelling are formulated

Technology phase-out as unravelling of socio-technical configurations:Cloud seeding case

Deliberate technology phase-out is being recognised as a viable policy option to weaken incumbent socio-technical configurations. At the same time, phase-out as a phenomenon has not been the focus of much attention in innovation studies and science and technology studies, where interest in emergence of technologies dominates. This is puzzling because phase-outs of sociotechnical configurations are real-world phenomena. We propose a conceptual framework to study the dynamics of phase-outs of socio-technical configurations drawing from social practice theory which offers specific, nuanced, yet simple heuristics to trace the multifaceted character of socio-technical configurations. We explore an historical case of an incomplete phase-out by revisiting cloud seeding technology in the US. We show how the incomplete phase-out of cloud seeding was reflected in incomplete disruption of linkages between the material, cognitive and symbolic elements of the configuration. This case shows how a technology once considered problematic can resurface and regain legitimacy