The Socially-Directed Science and Technology Model
Developed by Station1 Published in Leading Journal

The socially-directed science and technology model of research and education developed by Station1 has been published in a recent peer-reviewed article as part of a thematic issue on “History of Design, Techniques, and Technology” in the leading international bilingual journal Diseña of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (Citation: Spero, E. F., & Ortiz, C. (2021). Navigating Dimensions across Materials and History: Scale as a Lens to Understand Dynamic and Cumulative Sociotechnical Relationships. Diseña, (18), Article.1.). Diseña promotes research in all areas of Design, in particular critical thought about methodologies, methods, practices, and tools of research and project work. The article is available in English and Spanish.

Socially-directed science and technology seeks to address critical imperatives related to social inequities and planetary perils.  While the fields of science and technology have yielded enormous benefits to humanity, simultaneously they have also been entangled with, and contributed to these enduring challenges. As illustrated in the figure below, this model involves the intentional, holistic, and granular cross-disciplinary integration of research and development processes with knowledge, concepts, and methodologies from humanistic fields and the social sciences. With inquiry and research at its core, socially-directed science and technology maintains an integrative values-based intellectual foundation which recognizes respect for life, interdependence, cultural diversity and social justice, and sustainability. Furthermore, this model engages diverse bodies of scholarship and inclusive methods to bring the past, present, and future into conversation and to exceed proximity of disciplines to trans-disciplinary synthesis. Socially-directed science and technology influences agency and decision-making in an iterative and reflexive research and development process, including at the earliest stages. 

One component of socially-directed science and technology involves the integration of temporal thinking and historical analysis with scientific and technological concepts.  This is demonstrated  through this recent research study on water infrastructure, which integrates the fields of history and materials science and engineering (Spero & Ortiz, 2021).  This article analyzes the materiality of ubiquitous technological systems through the lens of scale for the case of materials underpinning water filtration and infrastructure in the 19th century manufacturing city in the United States. Lawrence, Massachusetts, the focus of this historical case, and home to Station1 (The Wood Worsted Mill built in 1912, currently the Riverwalk complex), provides a rich ecosystem for transformative and equitable learning, socially-contextualized technical research, and community engagement.  At this time, this immigrant city on the Merrimack River was a site of advanced water technology including sand filtration, sanitary science, civil engineering, and hydrology. An analysis related to materials structure-property-processing-performance correlations for water filtration and infrastructure is integrated with historical approaches to technological landscapes, the co-construction of use and value, and narratives of progress. This study provides insights into the dynamic social and material relationships that change across scales, as well as into mechanisms and cumulative influences of material constituents in larger sociotechnical systems. 

This type of  historical research encourages the formulation of questions, for example, related to origins, influences, and the linear assumptions of technological determinism; the reductive nature of popular narratives of progress and innovation; hidden labor, maintenance, and expertise; and the un/intended consequences of materials and design choices in technological systems. An emphasis on the temporal dimension highlights the pitfalls of short-term thinking and prompts the imagination of trajectories as part of a longer planetary ecosystem. The integration of historical perspectives is not meant to be prescriptive or predictive of ‘solutionsʼ for  contemporary challenges. Rather, it serves to enable an understanding of the complexities, ambiguities, trade-offs, incentive structures, desired outcomes and unintended consequences, and relationships to in/equities within sociotechnical systems.

We would like to acknowledge Katherine Zumach for her illustration expertise to aid in the visual translation of socially-directed science and technology framework, and the Lawrence History Center for their generosity in knowledge and archival material.