2017 Annual S.NET Meeting

The 9th annual S.NET meeting will take place October 9-11, 2017, at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at Arizona State University. 

The Society for the Study of New and Emerging Technologies (S.NET) is an international association that promotes intellectual exchange and critical inquiry about the advancement of new and emerging technologies in society. S.NET represents diverse communities, disciplines, viewpoints, and methodologies in the social sciences and humanities. It welcomes contributions from scientists and engineers that advance the critical reflection of nanoscience and other emerging technologies. 

Engaging the Flux

This year’s meeting will provide a forum for scholarly engagement and reflection on the meaning of coupled socio-technical change as a contemporary political phenomenon, a recurrent historical theme, and an object of future anticipation. 

Even the most seemingly stable entities fluctuate over time: facts and artifacts, cultures and constitutions, people and planets. As new and old act and interact within broader systems of time, space, and meaning, scholars, practitioners, and citizens not only observe but participate in the co-production of scientific discovery and technological innovation with social, political, and economic reconfiguration.

In embracing flux as its theme, the 2017 S.NET conference encourages participants to confront head on the place of science and technology in changing societies: What roles do new and emerging technologies play in the seemingly rapid and accelerating pace of political change reverberating across the planet? How can we square the power of science to generate knowledge and drive innovation with the power of discourses of “post-truth” and “alternative facts”? What kind of democracies are possible in today’s technology-dominated landscapes of communications, politics, identity, and legitimation?

Confirmed Keynote Speakers:

 Langdon Winner, Professor, Science and Technology Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

 Ulrike Felt, Professor, Science and Technology Studies, University of Vienna

 Alfred Nordmann, Professor, Philosophy, Technical University Darmstadt

 Conference Program

Book of Abstracts

Topics of interest include the following:

• Changing conceptions, responsibilities, and politics of knowledge, experts, and expertise;
• Shifting practices and performances of promoting, resisting, accepting, and embracing epistemic and socio-technical change;
• Evolving understandings of the university, and of education more generally, and their contributions to preparing diverse participants in the politics of emergence;
• Fluctuating cultural resources for understanding and navigating social and technological disruption;
• Emerging norms and practices for assessing credibility and building trust in science and technology;
• Realigning vulnerabilities and resiliencies in socio-technical systems at local, national and international scales and their meanings and implications for the governance of science, technology, and society;
• Stabilizing and destabilizing socio-technical identities, imaginaries, and relationships and their consequences for confidence in the institutions of science, innovation, and democracy;
• New and old strategies and practices of power and dissent and their intersections in the socio-technical landscapes of the present and future.

In addition, the usual S.NET themes are also strongly encouraged, including

• Research dynamics and organization
• Innovation and use
• Governance and regulation
• Politics and ethics
• Visions and cultural imaginaries
• Roles of publics and stakeholders

Submit your abstract now 

We invite individual paper submissions, open panel and closed session proposals, student posters, and special format sessions, including innovative audio-visual formats and art installations, storytelling fora, pop-up maker labs, and other interactive formats. 

The extended deadline for abstract submissions is April 30, 2017. Abstracts should be approximately 250 words in length, and emailed in PDF form to 2017snet@gmail.com.

Junior scholars and those with limited resources are strongly encouraged to apply, as the organizing committee is actively investigating potential sources of financial support. 

Read the full call for submissions, along with the President’s message

Location:
Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law
 the Beus Center for Law and Society
111 E Taylor St, Phoenix, AZ 85004

REGISTER FOR S.NET

HOTEL

THE DEADLINE TO BOOK YOUR HOTEL ROOM HAS BEEN EXTENDED TO SEPT.14 TO RECEIVE THE ROOM RATE.

Phoenix Marriott, just four blocks south of the conference location.  

Room rates are $139 for a single room and $159 for a double (all plus tax).  Rates after the 14th increase to $239.  

Book your group rate for Arizona State University S-Net Conference

Program Chair: Erik Fisher (ASU);

Scientific Committee: Chistopher Coenen (KIT), Kornelia Konrad (Twente), Vural Özdemir (Amrita University), Cynthia Selin (ASU);

Organizing Committee: Michael Bennett (ASU), Diana Bowman (ASU), Lauren Withycombe Keeler (ASU), Clark Miller (ASU), Jason O'Leary (ASU)