Technology is not the product of a unique technical rationality but of a combination of technical and social factors. The study of these factors must include not only the empirical methods of social science but also the interpretive methods of the humanities in order to get at the underlying meaning of technical objects and activities for participants.
Meaning is critically important insofar as technical objects are socially defined.
What it is to be an automobile or a television is settled by social processes that establish definitions of these objects and grant them specific social roles. Technology itself cannot determine the outcome of these processes. Rather, conflicting worldviews shape alternatives and so the results cannot be understood without a grasp of how worldviews come to be concretized in technology. These problems of meaning have been insufficiently considered in technology studies. It has been my contribution to emphasize them as the specific contribution of the humanities.