Technologies of Change

The dissertation project “Technologies of Change” is about the role of technical universities within the context of an “innovation society”. It is the rising demand of research for innovation next to the rising need of its legitimization that is at stake there. Research should produce disruptive technologies; innovation shall operate in networked structures; overall, innovation is in charge of becoming reflexive. Currently, there is the call for more responsibility in dealing with innovation (RRI). No one would disagree on the statement that the social is to be equal with the technical. Technical Universities, like TU Munich, are in the midst of socio-technical innovating, knowing they are both, objects and drivers of these developments. Technologies of change are a hypothetical acquisition towards the question, how the technical university transform itself in such a way, that she comes into being, not just as object, but also as player in the game of socio-technical innovation. My case study shows, that paradoxically hybridization of the social and technical, in the end, dissolves into a dominance of the technical.