Suchergebnisse

There is a growing recognition in the academic, policy and activist worlds of an urgency to navigate the current climate crisis by refusing to support production and use of certain technologies and infrastructures that are not environmentally sustainable (anymore). This research may be of relevance to scholars, policy-makers and anyone else curious of reading about why some technologies remain abandoned and do not return, while others do. This is a study of three historical cases of decline of technologies: the incandescent light bulb in the EU, cloud seeding in the US, and the Ural computer in Soviet Russia. The research presents an approach to trace, make sense and, possibly, act on technological decline. In the dissertation decline is conceptualised as "unravelling", as related competences become less used, related materials are harder to come by, and related meanings turn outdated. Six ideal-type pathways for the outcome of unravelling are formulated.

Literature on technological decline and related concepts is growing. We aim to advance theorizations of the dynamics of technological decline by mobilizing the concept of sociotechnical configuration and a metaphor of its "unraveling." We take as a case study the declined Soviet computer series Ural. Ural was once among the top three most used computers in the former Soviet Union, but went into decline and got lost even before the dissolution of the country. We find that technological decline is not a trivial process, it is not guaranteed to be gradual but can feature sudden shifts. These shifts can be drops of production and loss of knowledge, as well as efforts to push back. Policy could make use of ongoing processes of decline and try to replicate the effect of the decline of Ural via cessation of access to materials and competences and delegitimation of the technology.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- List of illustrations -- Notes on contributors -- Preface -- Acknowledgements -- 1. Introduction: The relevance of technologies in decline -- PART I: Conceptual explorations -- 2. Dynamics of technological decline as socio-material unravelling -- 3. Destabilisation, decline and phase-out in transitions research -- 4. Conceptual aspects of discontinuation governance: An exploration -- PART II: Empirical explorations -- 5. Discourses around decline: Comparing the debates on coal phase-out in the UK, Germany and Finland -- 6. Mapping the territorial adaptation of technological trajectories: The phase-out of the internal combustion engine -- 7. The role of alternative technologies in the enactment of (dis)continuities -- 8. Caring for decline: The case of 16mm film artworks of Tacita Dean -- PART III: Governance explorations -- 9. Implementing exnovation?: Ambitions and governance complexity in the case of the Brussels Low Emission Zone -- 10. Phase-out as a policy approach to address sustainability challenges: A systematic revie -- 11. The end of the world's leaded petrol era: Reflections on the final four decades of a century-long campaign -- 12. Conclusions and continuations: Horizons for studying technologies in decline -- Index.