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copertina / cover Public Smog (2004-ongoing), by Amy Balkin et al. Public Smog is a "clean-air" park in the atmosphere that fluctuates in location and scale. The park is constructed through financial, legal, or political activities that open it for public use. Activities to open Public Smog have included the purchase and retiring emissions offsets (NOX and CO2) in regulated emissions schemes in the US and European Union, making them inaccessible to polluting industries. This activity resulted in the opening of parks above Southern California (June 2004), the European Union (2006-7), and the United States (2010). When Public Smog is built through this process, it exists in the unfixed public airspace above the region where offsets are purchased and withheld from use. The park’s size varies, reflecting the amount of emissions allowances purchased and the length of the contract. Other activities to create Public Smog impact the size, location, and duration of the park. The work is currently focused on building a larger, permanent atmospheric preserve through an effort to inscribe Earth's Atmosphere on the UNESCO World Heritage List, begun in 2006, but developed more fully in collaboration with Documenta (13) since 2010. This undertaking has involved an invitation first presented to Germany, then to all UNESCO States Parties, to act as lead State Party in initiating an extraordinary nomination process for inscription of Earth's atmosphere. With the exception of the Kingdom of Tonga, no reply of interest was received, so a petition was launched from within the exhibition, requesting the audience to further petition their respective governments via signed postcard. Over 100,000 audience-participants supported this call while the exhibition was open. However, the outcome of this activity is uncertain. Other activities to articulate Public Smog have included a climate-futuring breakfast (2006), and a series of thirty billboards presented across Douala, Cameroon in 2009, prefiguring the benefits, complications, and implications of enacting Public Smog over Africa. The cover image, by curator Benoît Mangin, documents this iteration of the work. In addition to activities that open Public Smog, the work attempts to examine and enact a response to the increasing impacts on the climate system from anthropogenic activities. It is also concerned with the politics of participation, particularly around claims of markets and states to act on behalf of local and global publics to mitigate the impacts of climate change. To this end, the project has involved a growing group of interdisciplinary participants and advisors, including climate scientist Dr. Alexandra Thompson. A full credit list is online at publicsmog.org. Amy Balkin (photograph by Benoît Mangin) Tecnoscienza è una rivista scientifica che indaga i rapporti tra scienza, tecnologia e società. La rivista è semestrale, open access e peer-reviewed; la rivista è gestita da un Comitato di Redazione, con la supervisione di un Comitato Scientifico Internazionale. Tecnoscienza is a scientific journal focusing on the relationships between science, technology and society. The Journal is published twice a year with an open access and peer reviewed policy; it is managed by an Editorial Board with the supervision of an International Advisory Board. Tecnoscienza by Tecnoscienza.net is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribuzione-Non commerciale-Condividi allo stesso modo 2.5 Italia License. Comitato di Redazione / Editorial Board Coordinamento / Management Guido Nicolosi (Università di Catania) Paolo Magaudda Laura Lucia Parolin (Università di Padova) (Università di Milano – Bicocca) Alvise Mattozzi Barbara Pentimalli (Libera Università di Bolzano) (Università di Roma – La Sapienza) Giuseppina Pellegrino Manuela Perrotta (Università della Calabria) (Norwegian University of Science and Technology) Tiziana Piccioni Membri / Members (IULM Milano) Attila Bruni Assunta Viteritti (Università di Trento) (Università di Roma – La Sapienza) Claudio Coletta (Università di Padova) Enrico Marchetti (Università di Ferrara) Comitato Scientifico Internazionale / International Advisory Board Maria Carmela Agodi Luca Guzzetti (Università di Napoli – Italy) (Università di Genova – Italy) Barbara Allen Christine Hine (Virginia Tech University – Usa) (University of Surrey – UK) Mario Biagioli Alessandro Mongili (University of California Davis – Usa) (Università di Padova – Italy) Wiebe Bijker Michela Nacci (Maastricht University – The Netherlands) (Università dell’Aquila – Italy) Geoffrey Bowker Federico Neresini (University of Pittsburgh – Usa) (Università di Padova – Italy ) Massimiano Bucchi Trevor J. Pinch (Università di Trento – Italy) (Cornell University – Usa) Barbara Czarniawska Lucy Suchman (Göteborg University – Sweden) (Lancaster University – UK) Steven Epstein Paolo Volontè (UC San Diego – Usa) (Politecnico di Milano – Italy) Silvia Gherardi (Università di Trento – Italy) Tecnoscienza is promoted by STS Italia (www.stsitalia.org) Società Italiana di Studi sulla Scienza e la Tecnologia Tecnoscienza c/o STS Italia, Dip. FISPPA, Via Cesarotti, 10-12, 35100 – Padova – Italy www.tecnoscienza.net – [email protected] – ISSN 2038-3460 Tecnoscienza Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies Vol. 3, Nr. 2, December 2012 Table of Contents Cover Public Smog, by Amy Balkin et al. Presidential Address Attila Bruni STS, Italia p. 3 Lectures Alex Preda Pandora’s Box: Opening Up Finance to STS Investigations p. 23 Essays / Saggi Silvia Casini and Federico Neresini Behind Closed Doors. Scientists’ and Science Communicators’ Discourses on Science in Society. A Study Across European Research Institutions p. 37 Elisa A.G. Arfini Scientificamente provato? Controversie biopolitiche nel trattamento dell’iperplasia surrenale congenita p. 63 Conversations / Conversazioni Giuseppina Pellegrino, Tonino Perna and Iacopo Salemmi Financial Markets, Climate Change and STS p. 97 Leonardo Chiariglione and Paolo Magaudda Formatting Culture. The Mpeg group and the technoscientific innovation by digital formats p. 125 Sara Casati, Stefano Crabu, Marialuisa Lavitrano and Mauro Turrini HeLa. Reconstructing an Immortal Bio p. 147 Scenarios / Scenari Manuela Perrotta The Study of Technoscientific Imaging in STS p. 163 Book Reviews p. 177 D. Bennato, Sociologia dei media digitali. Relazioni sociali e processi comunicativi del web partecipativo (2011) by Fausto Colombo C. Kehr, P. Schüßler and M.D. Weitze (eds.) Neue Technologien in der Gesellschaft – Akteure, Erwartungen, Kontroversen und Konjunkturen (2011) by Mareike Glöss M. Maestrutti, Imaginaires des nanotechnologies. Mythes et fictions de l’infiniment petit (2012) by Brice Laurent H. Galperin and J. Mariscal (eds.) Pobreza Digital – Perspectivas de America Latina y el Caribe (2009) by Gianluca Miscione K. Adler, Politikkens natur. Naturens politikk (2011) by Håkon B. Stokland M. Callon, P. Lascoumes and Y. Barthe, Acting in an Uncertain World: an Essay on Technical Democracy (2009) by Maurizio Teli Science, Design and Everyday Life: D. A. Norman Living withComplexity (2011) and M. Gross, Ignorance and Surprise. Science, Society and Ecological Design (2010) by Francesco Ronzon Presidential Address STS, ITALIA Attila Bruni Abstract What is the state of art of Science and Technology Studies in Italy? What happened in the last five years? In this paper, the departing President of STS Italia traces the main lines of research of STS scholars in Italy, highlighting the ways in which a scientific field (previously under-represented in the Italian scenario) has gained visibility and substance. In particular, the narration concentrates on the capacity of researchers to build research networks (at both national and inter- national level) actively contributing to the inter/national debate, as well as to ques- tion and innovate ways of thinking about technology and the social itself. Keywords Science and Technology Studies; Italy; scientific community; academy; research. Introduction Our policy, and one point: we want to examine the pulsar for the way it is in hand at all times in the enquiry. We want to see the way it is ‘per- formatively’ objective. We did not examine and we want not to examine the end-point object for its correspondence to an original plan. We want to disregard, we want not to take seriously, how closely or how badly the object corresponds to some original design – particularly to some cogni- tive expectancy or some theoretical model – that is independent of their embodied work’s particular occasions as of which the object’s production – the object – consists, only and entirely. (Garfinkel et al. 1981, p. 137) During the joint EASST/4S conference of this year (Copenhagen, 17-21 Octo- ber 2012), two particularly flattering things happened to me. First, I was invited (in my capacity as President of STS Italia) by the Netherlands Graduate Research School for Science, Technology & Modern Culture (WTMC) to speak briefly on TECNOSCIENZA Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies Volume 3(2) pp. 3-21 - ISSN 2038-3460 http://www.tecnoscienza.net © 2012 TECNOSCIENZA 4 BRUNI the occasion of the ‘lunch meeting’ organized to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniver- sary of its foundation and the second edition (again after twenty-five years) of The Social Construction of Technological Systems (Bijker et al. 1987, 2012). The editors were present at the lunch, as well as some of the contributors to the book and oth- er leading scholars and personalities in the international