How to move from object to project

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Week 3 > Week 3 Part 1 > How to move from object to project

What makes technical objects invisible to us, most of the time, is

that they are seen in three dimensions as many pieces of stuff. The
fourth dimension, that of time, is always ignored. And yet, they
have a history and often a complex one. The problem is to learn
how to represent such a movement. The first thing is to treat
techniques as projects, not as objects. Then, we need to learn
how to list the many episodes that make up the life history of the
project. Especially difficult is the fact that, for most of the period in
a life of the project, there is no object at all, but only ideas,
meetings, blueprints, papers, discussions and disputes. Being an
object, for a technique, is only a moment. And when the project
fails to deliver an object, there is nothing to see but ruins and
carcasses.

To give you a feel for what it means to follow a project, we have

chosen a film that represents, through specifically drawn diagrams,
the whole history of a British military plane that has been studied by
two of the great sociologists of techniques, Michel Callon and John
Law.

EXAMPLE OF THE TSR2 PROJECT

For the lessons to draw from such an example, go to How to
draw a Socio-technical diagram
For more information about the TSR2 example, you can also
read : TSR2 by Callon and Law