社會技術變遷的時機：尺度化形勢與差速轉譯機制

The Juncture of Socio-technical Change: Scaled Propensity and Differential Translation Mechanism

本文認為探討社會技術變遷的主要觀點，包括「技術的社會建構」、「大型技術系統」、「多層次視角」，以及「行動者網絡理論」等各有所長，但是它們對於社會技術變遷的脈絡和時機討論不足。相對的，作者提出拼裝紋理、差速轉譯機制、尺度化形勢等概念，以及時機觀點，藉以理解社會技術變遷，並超脫脈絡決定論和實作決定論的兩難。作者將社會技術複合體視為由差速轉譯機制體現的拼裝紋理， 而試圖改變紋理的轉譯方案能否奏效，取決於與不同尺度化形勢的搭配。轉譯方案搭接形勢而構成新拼裝紋理的關鍵是物質化，這透露了差速轉譯機制中極慢或穩定元素的作用。作者以公車專用道為例，說明其作為拼裝特殊紋理的轉譯方案，成效取決於能否與特定形勢的時機搭配。1960 年代以降多次倡議的公車專用道難以落實，並非缺乏知識和技術，而是源於時勢與差速轉譯機制的欠缺。公車專用道於1990 年代得以具體推展，關鍵是在交通危機形勢下通過物質部署而確保了路權，進而基礎設施化。然而，新的公車優先號誌轉譯方案， 則仍受制於形勢而難以落實。

This paper argues that the main perspectives on socio-technical change, including 'Social Construction of Technology', 'Large Technological System', 'Multi-Level Perspective', and 'Actor-Network Theory', have their own strengths, but they are under-discussed about the context and juncture of socio-technical change. Compare to this, the author tries to understand social-technical changes by proposing the notions of assembled texture, differential translation mechanism, scaled propensity and the juncture perspective, with which to surpass the dilemma of context-determinism and practice-determinism. Social-technical complex is the embodied assembled texture of differential translation mechanism, and whether a translation program can alter the texture or not depends on its conjunction with varied scaled propensities. Moreover, the incorporation of translation program into the propensity and the consequent constitution of new assembled textures have crucially relied on materialization, a fact that confirms the working of stagnant or stable elements in the differential translation mechanism. The exclusive bus lane understood as such is a translation program aiming to assemble particular textures, whose effects however are contingent on its compatibility with the juncture of propensity. Taking the exclusive bus lane as an example, the author explains that as a translation program for assembling particular textures, the effect depends on whether it can be matched with the juncture of propensity. Since the 1960s, it is difficult to implement the bus-only lanes proposed many times, not because of lack of knowledge and technology, but because of the lack of juncture and differential translation mechanism. In contrast, bus lanes were specifically developed in the 1990s, and the key was to ensure the right of way through material deployment under the traffic crisis situation, and then to be infrastructuralized. However, the new translation program of bus priority transit signals is however impeded by the given propensity.