Translation Terrain and Pied Piper Detour: How Experts Eliminated a Norwegian Digital City Project

摘要

The analysis of contemporary socio-tecknical processes can benefit greatly, methodologically speaking, from considering past processes and solutions. Obviously, all technological projects have a prehistory upon which they depend to a certain extent. In some cases, the prehistory might even take on the shape of a translation terrain, which technical experts employ explicitly to sidestep inexperienced nonexperts. Also, mechanisms that can best be described as a pied piper detour, rather than as an obligatory passage point, are relied on by technical experts who want to exclude the views and participation of nonexperts for themselves to assume a dominating position in the Machiavellian tradition. The relevance and operation of these socio-technical mechanisms were amply illustrated in the Norwegian town of Fredrikstad, where plans for establishing an IT highway project-a digital city concept developed and supported by users (both bureaucrats and laypersons)-came to nothing after technical experts intervened in the shape of a mediating agency and introduced their own scenarios.