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Prepaid Card Technology and the Concept of the Socio-Technological Aggregate

Bunkyo University, k_smikey@ yahoo.co.jp

This paper compares two case studies of prepaid card technology where the same ``technology'' is applied in two separate industries, the public telephone industry and the pachinko game industry in Japan. The different outcomes in the two areas are analyzed in terms of the functions of what is introduced here as ``socio-technological aggregates'' (STA). A socio-technological aggregate is composed of an initiating innovator component and heterogeneous components necessary for the technology to function in a given society. The analysis of technology as an STA gained insights from the phenomena of aggregates in other areas: the socio-literary aggregate created by Russell McCormmach in Night Thoughts of a Classical Physicist; by the ``collage'' phenomenon created by Picasso, Braque; and others, and the socio-musical aggregates of John Cage. Two important aspects of an STA are: the bonding/managing component that dictates how a technology is applied; and the evaluator component that triggers multimodality.

Key Words: prepaid card • telephone card • pachinko card • socio-technological aggregate • multimodality

This version was published on July 1, 2009

Science, Technology & Human Values, Vol. 34, No. 4, 523-547 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0162243908329376


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