In fact, the trajectory of a project depends not on the context but on the people who do the work of contextualizing. The lecture notes for the next meeting will discuss the work done to create infrastructure for technology and science. The discussion on the top of p.132 makes it clear that theories based on general laws, like Newtonian mechanics, should not be considered for sociological explanations. Photo 20 is very sad. So real engineering is about finding the right trande-offs among such factors.
Engineering is all about finding the right compromises.
There are many interesting historical cases to illustrate these points. For example, Edison and Westinghouse, in their fierce competition about whether AC or DC should be used for mass power distribution, toured the country, giving dramatic demonstrations in theatres. Companies spend a great deal of effort training employees in social skills such as how to conduct a meeting, ethics, management skills, group skills, etc., and many say that such skills are essential for advancement. What all these disasters had in common is that they were impossible to hide, which suggests that they are in fact the tip of an enormous iceberg of failures which were never made public, such as the near failure of Bank of America in the late 80s. Of course, these figures vary widely among projects.