The Greatest Missions Never Flown: Anticipatory Discourse and the “Projectory” in Technological Communities

Abstract

This article introduces the concept of the sociotechnical projectory to explore the importance of future-oriented discourse in technical practice. It examines the case of two flagship NASA missions that, since the 1960s, have been continually proposed and deferred. Despite the missions never being flown, it argues that they produced powerful effects within the planetary science community as assumed "end-points" to which all current technological, scientific, and community efforts are directed. It asserts that attention to the social construction of technological systems requires historical attention to how actors situate themselves with respect to a shared narrative of the future.

If software is narrative: Joseph Weizenbaum, artificial intelligence and the biographies of ELIZA

“…In other words, narrative patterns – such as the recurring trope of the ‘death’ of a medium mentioned above – allow users to preserve the consequentiality of their everyday life against the instability of technological change (Striphas, 2009). Indeed, historians of technology have shown that technologies function not only at a material and technical level, but also through the narratives they generate or into which they are forced (Edgerton, 2007; Messeri and Vertesi, 2015). This is true for software as well.…”

Imagining the thinking machine: Technological myths and the rise of artificial intelligence

“…As historians of technology have shown, future-oriented discourse in techno-scientific environment may contribute to shift the emphasis from the present state of research towards an imagined prospect in which the technology will be successfully implemented. Such "sociotechnical projectory" contributes to create a community of researchers, introducing a shared objective or endpoint that informs and organizes the work of scientists, technologists and engineers involved in such community (Messeri and Vertesi, 2015). In the case of AI research, the call to future developments was a common staple by which present shortcomings in the applications of AI research were redirected towards a seemingly proximate future in which these failings would be overcome.…”

Resonant worlds: Cultivating proximal encounters in planetary science

“…For exoplanet astronomers, scientists looking for and studying planets around other stars, the Earthlike, habitable planet is the holy grail of their profession (Messeri and Vertesi ). Such a planet would be the same mass and volume as Earth, and it would orbit its star at a distance such that its surface could support liquid water.…”