PhD Candidate, Yale University
Contributing Editor, Platypus, The CASTAC Blog
About Michelle
Michelle Venetucci is an anthropologist studying the interplay between middle class domesticity and speculative finance in Silicon Valley, exploring the implications for how emerging technologies are developed.
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Contributions to Platypus, The CASTAC Blog
View all of Michelle's posts on Platypus, The CASTAC Blog.
Series: Theorizing Stuckness in Science and Technology
What might we learn by studying science and technology through the lens of stuckness? Stuckness is a ubiquitous experience in the everyday work of science and technology. Scientists are constantly frustrated with unexpected obstacles to their research plans (Messeri & Vertesi, 2015). Technologists who aspire to change the world often end up reproducing current structures of power (Rider, 2022). In popular discourse, scientific and technological practice has been associated with progress as steady betterment. As Leo Marx (2010) notes in tracing the emergence of the word “technology” in English, scientific and mechanical innovations became synonymous with social progress in the 19th century. And yet, getting stuck is a quotidian experience among experts in these fields, from experiments that fail to grant applications that are rejected. (more…) (read more...)