| Chapter 1: | Converting Consumers: The Conceptual Dependence of Controversial Artifacts |
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But at the same time he proposes a highly restricted model in which actions and interactions are constrained by their technological frame and thus “not everything is possible anymore.”25 Bijker seeks to show that social groups and the meanings associated with them are governed not by their interests in artifacts alone but by some other conceptual factors akin to Thomas Kuhn’s notion of paradigm.26
Users
As SCOT became known in various academic circles, its applications moved beyond explaining the development of a certain artifact to include how modifications to a finished product occur. After the early 1980s publication of Pinch and Bijker’s article on the safety bicycle,27 in the mid-1990s Ronald Kline and Trevor Pinch wrote “Users as Agents of Technological Change: The Social Construction of the Automobile in the Rural United States”28 to show how changes occur beyond the design stage.29 In their study of the Ford Model T, Kline and Pinch focus on the consumption rather than the design stage, with a consequent emphasis on users rather than manufacturers: