High-Tech: Power and Unpredictability at the Technological Frontier and in Bitcoin

Abstract

In scientific inquiry and technological change the presence of uncertainty, linked to power, is explicitly acknowledged and actively explored. Innovation and improvisation define and constitute manifestations of protean power that are related closely to more familiar control power. The resulting technological and knowledge shifts have important consequences, as actors cope with questions and solutions that arise in the face of risk and uncertainty. This chapter focuses on these dynamics. They unfold in especially interesting ways when the most relevant actors agree that uncertainty is pervasive and unavoidable. Two empirical illustrations, knowledge frontiers and bitcoin technology, explore the different manifestations of protean power in detail. The first example traces improvisation, learning, and advances in science and technology fields, taking us well beyond the narrow bounds of the “controlled” experiments on which they rest.