Sammendrag
The symbolic and cultural aspects of technology have been the prime focus in social studies of S&T, and this emphasis has been important for several reasons and in several areas. For instance groups of system designers have acknowledged the significance of considering cultural aspects in system design, and we may see a development/change in technological design projects. Here understanding the social and cultural character of work has increasingly been accepted as a necessary part of the design process. In some design approaches the need for a detailed understanding of how work is performed, how workers cooperate and communicate, and what resources they draw on, is even seen as vital and integrated part of the design process. Consequently, these approaches try to integrate present culture into their technological products. Another feature of social scientists studying technology has been a main focus on the completed products, at least products that have been considered complete from the manufacturers hand. Social scientists have typically identified central actors in the making of e.g. a technological artifact or a scientific fact and how the actors have managed to conquer competition and convince the world that their idea or product is the best (the classic ANT piece). In this paper I want to focus on materiality and technology in the making. More specifically, I want to discuss the relations between culture/the social and materiality in a system design project where there at present time no material product exists, but where materiality vs. culture and the translation between these two domains are constant issues. Discussing technology in the making also implies that its symbolic and cultural meanings are by no means clear yet. It is thus easier, I would argue, to avoid a cultural reductionist point of view. The discussion is based on my own experiences in an interdisciplinary project trying to develop a mobile interface to the electronic patient record at the hospital, thus contributing to better collaboration between health personnel, enhancing coordination of tasks and providing better access to information independent of place. Trying to support today’s culture via some technological device obviously presupposes knowledge about today’s culture. Ethnographic study of the site may thus provide insight into working practices and be a source for both expressed and tacit knowledge employed in work. Both myself as a social scientist and the computer scientist, whose task is to develop the user interface (and who consequently also decides what lies beneath the surface of the computer), have observed health personnel in the hospital. Through some simple examples I want to look at how material decisions are an obvious part of the sociologists work in a technology-designing team. Furthermore I want to discuss how one might ‘translate’ culture to materiality, with a particular emphasis on the collaboration between the different members in this project. As a social scientist I am focused on the social, the cultural, the symbolic when observing health personnel working, while the engineer has a more action-oriented attitude. Collaboration between the two of us means challenging our preconceptions. The engineer needs to focus more on the social while as a social scientist you suddenly find yourself in a role where you must relate to technical issues.
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