Technological transitions

Summary

Technological transitions (TT) can best be described as a collection of theories regarding how technological innovations occur, the driving forces behind them, and how they are incorporated into society. TT draws on a number of fields, including history of science, technology studies, and evolutionary economics. Alongside the technological advancement, TT considers wider societal changes such as "user practices, regulation, industrial networks (supply, production, distribution), infrastructure, and symbolic meaning or culture". Hughes refers to the 'seamless web' where physical artifacts, organizations, scientific communities, and social practices combine. A technological transition occurs when there is a major shift in these socio-technical configurations. Origins Work on technological transitions draws on a number of fields including history of science, technology studies, and evolutionary economics. The focus of evolutionary economic

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_transitions

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Socio-technical energy transitions are long-term and major transformations in incumbent energy infrastructures. They include fundamental changes in technologies as well as institutions and social patterns. Transition studies are primarily focused on frameworks for analyzing the entire transition process by investigating the historical cases of transitions. A multi-phase approach to transition posits this process begins with a pre-development phase characterized by technological and institutional lock-ins, and resistance from incumbent actors. This period is critical for a forward-looking approach to transitions, since early developments shape path-dependent and irreversible processes leading to the emergence of new transition pathways. However, our understanding about the mechanisms and dynamics of this phase is still very limited. This is mainly due to lack of data, weak conceptualization and the necessity of developing new methods proper to deal with these limitations. This dissertation develops methodologies for investigating some complex questions arising in the pre-development phase, by focusing on the case of smart grid development. The first essay uses insights from modeling interventions in complex systems and builds a System Dynamics model to investigate the cost allocation problem of smart metering roll-out. The second essay takes ideas from Technological Innovation System approach and develops a method to analyze the emergence of spatial diversity in smart grid development by combining Social Network Analysis and Agent-Based Modeling. The third essay builds on ideas from network theory and evolutionary modeling to develop a method for identifying the main path of knowledge development and analyzing knowledge trajectories in smart grid initiatives.

EPFL2017

Comparing habitats: Reframing comparison in the “Post-disciplinary” era

Martina Barcelloni Corte, Elena Cogato Lanza, Florence Graezer Bideau

In recent decades, cities and territories have radically changed; the ecological, societal and technological transition has opened up an entirely new season of thinking in the field of urbanism, entailing a necessary and deep revision of tools, categories and methods inherited from the past. The variety of spatial forms that articulate infrastructures, built morphologies, bio-environmental systems, economies, and urban-rural relations, challenges simplistic oppositions such as centre/periphery, city/countryside, nature/society and call for new alliances among disciplines. Climate change, the depletion of energy resources, growing migrations, the emergence of new forms of work and lifestyles, or the rising impact of digital technologies, are just some of the dynamics that are thoroughly transforming the ways in which our urbanized territories are rapidly developing and which upcoming generations of architects and urbanists will have to increasingly deal with. The issues of the contemporary architectural and urban project related to environmental and social equity/security, require a deep rethinking of technical knowledge and embedded traditions, and this beyond any principle of hierarchy or historical progress. As much in scientific – experimental and theoretical – as in professional practices, Comparison seems more essential than ever. Scientific training in comparative methods requires regular updating, in order to take into account, on the one hand, the rapid evolution of socio-spatial realities under study, methods of data collection, and archiving, and on the other, the variety of languages, techniques, and scales involved in the description and analysis. Comparing Habitats aims to discuss the actuality and the problems related to Comparison as a Scientific Method and its heuristic efficiency, while focusing on its devices, purposes and challenges.

http://contourjournal.org2019

Aux portes du monde miroir

Isabella Di Lenardo, Frédéric Kaplan

The Mirror World is no longer an imaginary device, a mirage in a distant future, it is a reality under construction. In Europe, Asia and on the American continent, large companies and the best universities are working to build the infrastructures, to define their functionalities, to specify their logistics. The Mirror World, in its asymptotic form, presents a quasi-continuous representation of the world in motion, integrating, virtually, all photographic perspectives. It is a new giant computational object, opening the way to new research methods or even probably to a new type of science. The economic and cultural stakes of this third platform are immense. If the Mirror World transforms access to knowledge for new generations, as the Web and Social Networks did in their time, it is our responsibility to understand and, if need be, bend its technological trajectory to make this new platform an environment for the critical knowledge of the past and the creative imagination of the future.

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Comparing habitats: Reframing comparison in the “Post-disciplinary” era

Martina Barcelloni Corte, Elena Cogato Lanza, Florence Graezer Bideau

http://contourjournal.org2019