Place : Sophia Campus 
Time : 11:30am - 01:00pm
Speaker : Mia Chang-Zunino (ESCP)
 

Abstract : The socio-cognitive view of technology has largely focused on backward-looking processes of making sense of emerging artifacts, while overlooking the forward-looking process of envisioning possible futures and its role in technology evolution. In particular, the phenomenon we term the vision-reality gap—the perceived temporal gap between envisioned futures and status quo—has been widely observed but remains understudied. To examine how the vision-reality gap drives technology evolution, we draw on extensive qualitative archival data spanning from 1945 to 2000. We trace the co-evolution of the technological and commercial visions of “robot” and the subsequent technological trajectories in the field of robotics. We find that the field emerged when communities envisioning interconnected yet distinct features—“automation” and “autonomy”—aligned and developed a coherent vision about future sequences, resulting in the outpouring of resources into the field. However, when the vision-reality gap widened again, the communities focused on “automation” and “autonomy” diverged, and the latter became increasingly dominant in shaping the field of robotics despite its longer-term, more visionary goals. This study contributes to our understanding of the socio-cognitive dynamics of technological development and highlights the vision-reality gap as a key element in the temporal dimensions of field and technology evolution.