Концепция больших технологических систем Томаса Хьюза – между технологическим детерминизмом и социальным конструктивизмом

Социология науки и технологий. 2016. Т. 7. № 4. С. 150–161.

Широков А. А.

The article is devoted to Thomas Hughes’ conception of Large Technological Systems. According to him, the activities of different professionals, such as engineers, scientists, etc., should be described as a seamless web. They have some pragmatical goals and during their realization, they do not adhere to any tough separation concerning types of knowledge or professional borders. To grasp and describe this seamless web Hughes develops the conception of Large Technological Systems in which social and technical elements of a system are inseparably linked. Technological systems are created for certain pragmatical goals or to solve some problem, which is usually concerned with reordering of material world in order to make it more productive in terms of goods and services. According to Hughes, modern large technological systems seem to evolve in accordance with some pattern. The history of evolving or expanding of a system might be presented in the phases in which the following types of activity predominate: invention, development, innovation, transfer, and growth, competition, and consolidation. As systems grow up, they become inert. Though technological systems are socially designed and in the beginning strongly depend on various groups of people, further, they begin to exert a soft determinism on other systems and groups. Such a scheme does not contradict with social con structivism, and at the same time does not support belief in a technical determinism. Despite further criticism of Hughes’s ideas, he was one of the first who introduced a very important idea for STS in general that as society shapes technologies, so technologies shape society. There is a mutual influence between them. Therefore Hughes remains an important author for this discipline.

Keywords: STS, history of technology, история технологий, large technological systems, Science and Technology Studies (STS), Thomas Hughes, technological momentum, концепция больших технологических систем, Томас Хьюз, инертность технологий, технологические системы