This book questions whether technologies are the rational tangible scientific
forward-thinking neutral objects they are so often perceived to be exploring instead how
powerful mythic ideas about technologies drive our social understanding and our expectations
of them. Against a rising tide of information we encounter significant technological
scientific and medical advances which promise to create an educated humane and equal world.
This book explores that promise deconstructing technologies to conclude that though they do
afford us significant and empowering advances they remain largely cloaked in mystery and
often promise more than they can deliver. Contributors from diverse intellectual backgrounds
and political and epistemological stances - spanning sociology and psychosocial investigations
innovation studies and scientists - combine philosophical inquiry and empirical case studies
to create a book which is at once provocative innovative and exciting in the challenges it
poses.
