Introduction: Postcolonial Technoscience

摘要

We tried to do what we could ... We don't have contacts in our address book for anybody in that part of the world (Charles McCreery, Director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Centre, Honolulu, reflecting in the aftermath of the 26 December 2004 tsunami). In an age of transnational scientific communities, international technological networks, and rapid communication facilities, the destruction wrought by the tsunami in the Indian Ocean on 26 December 2004 is shocking and, for some, bewildering. The emphasis on the magnitude of this event as a natural disaster has facilitated a massive mobilisation of sympathy and resources on an unprecedented international scale. However, this naturalisation has obscured patterns of uneven distribution of resources in and through tech-noscience that have made this tsunami such a tragedy.