Introduction
We live in an era of paradoxes. On the one hand, we are faced with an evergrowing array of technological developments that affect communication, work, travel, domestic and leisure activities, and political and ethical debates. We cannot envisage life without them. They structure the world we live in. On the other hand, in many ways we do not understand these technologies. The surprising thing is that this is true for technological professionals as well as for laypeople. Our situation is characterized both by our ignorance of new technologies and by our faith in them. Sometimes technology is brushed aside as something belonging to another world. At other times, when our attention is focused on humans, technology may appear inhuman or superhuman. It may seem to belong to an area reserved for specialists. With its principles, laws, methods, and models, technology can seem cold, rational, boring, and inaccessible. It is taught and presented in this way to specialists. It may be packed into a set of rational theories, but this does not mean that it is understood any better. In this book we propose another approach to our technical reality. We invite the reader to open the doors of plants, design offices, and laboratories so as to see how things really are done. A different vision of technology will emerge—a vision that technicians should find easy to understand because it will be based on their day-to-day life. We will see, for instance, engineers busy tinkering with high-tech prototypes, struggling with unsuitable software programs, and even negotiating the installation of a new waste container with stubborn salespeople. While providing testimony and socio-technical analysis, we also give engineers some pointers concerning technical processes and associated tools. We do not aim to provide a single answer or a guide to the best practices; rather, we hope to bring to light some new facts about the complexity of the actual situations and practices an engineer must face. We try to show that these situations and practices can be approached through ethnographic methods that generate know-how and instruments for action.