Hybridity and Technology Transfer

Abstract

Defining the concept of hybridization as ways in which forms become separated from existing practices and recombined with new forms in new practices highlight the problematic division between natural and artificial. When further analysing our technological contexts, a conclusion is that relations between institutions and technologies should be characterized more by technological stability than institutional. Moreover, technology transfer from one institutional context to another and the subsequent adjustments of both technologies and institutions is a common feature of today as well as the specific case ofgeneric technologies. Analyses of the past two decades stress the mixing of technologies and institutions over cultures and geographical distances when highlighting what are judged to be important components of present changes.