Call for Presentations

 The Center for Science, Technology, and Society (CSTS) at Missouri University of Science and Technology announces its Spring 2019 STS symposium. The symposium will be held Wednesday, April 24, 2019 in the Havener Center on the S&T campus.

The theme of this Spring’s meeting is Maintenance. This symposium examines maintenance, broadly conceived, from infrastructure and systems maintenance and life cycle assessment to health maintenance to cultures of maintenance. While innovation is celebrated, the bulk of what most technologists and others who interact with technology actually do is some form of maintenance. As Andrew Russell and Lee Vinsel state, “Entire societies have come to talk about innovation as if it were an inherently desirable value, like love, fraternity, courage, beauty, dignity, or responsibility. Innovation-speak worships at the altar of change, but it rarely asks who benefits, or to what end? A focus on maintenance provides opportunities to ask questions about what we really want out of technologies. What do we really care about? What kind of society do we want to live in? Will this help get us there?” We are calling for abstracts of 150 words for presentations no longer than 15 minutes with 5 minutes for questions. Presenters are encouraged to treat their session as an opportunity to tell a story and not necessarily to read aloud. Presenters have the option of using a projector to display slides, if they wish. We also welcome posters for a poster session. If you wish to submit a poster please include a 50 word abstract for a 48”x 36” poster. Please send a short abstract to Jeff Schramm, schrammj@mst.edu with a subject of “CSTS symposium” by Friday, March 29, 2019.  This event is free to attend.