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This essay is about the origin, planning and establishment of the European Space Research Organisation's (ESRO) sounding rocket base Esrange outside Kiruna in Northern Sweden. Three main questions are examined. First I show there were not just scientific and technical but also political, economical as well as military reasons to build a European rocket base. Second, I scrutinize the reasons to choose Northern Sweden as the location for the rocket base. As it turns out, the main reasons were the favourable location of Northern Sweden within the aurora oval zone, the proximity of the Kiruna Geophysical Observatory, and the possibility to use a large, although not quite uninhabited, area where the launched rockets could crash. Finally, I examine the difficulty of talking about boundaries of various kinds, such as temporal, spatial and functional. The essay also provides a discussion on possible ways to continue research on this topic.

Science and technology have a tendency to clump together in places where they spawn other forms of societal activities. Sometimes these places become famous through processes known as place-making, or the social construction of place. Because the scientific and technological activities affect the places, and the places conversely affect the science and technology, it is relevant to study how and why these connections emerge.

This dissertation examines the particular case of the northern Swedish town of Kiruna, which has become known for being a `space town' because of its scientific, technological, and other activities that relate to the near space around the earth. The overall objective is to analyse the processes underlying the making of Kiruna as a space town in the period 1943--2000.

Five parts make up the study. First is an examination of how the development of space physics research in Kiruna led to the setting up of a scientific observatory. The second part studies how the Swedish participation in the European Space Research Organisationmade Kiruna the place for a rocket base. Next follows an analysis of how local business efforts contributed to forming a new satellite technology business and the Space House office building. The fourth part concerns how the visions to establish a space `university' eventually led to the emergence of the Space Campus. Last is an epilogue that briefly analyses the space tourism efforts in Kiruna.

A central finding is that the space town has emerged as the result of entwined processes where, on the one hand, ideas about the near space around the earth have led to new activities and physical structures, and, on the other hand, these new activities and built structures conversely have inspired to new ideas. Of importance is also the geographical place where these developments have occurred. Here, a reoccurring argument to placing the activities and structures in Kiruna was the town's geographically favourable location for specific scientific and technological activities.

Another finding is that the development has gradually led to the emergence of a kind of identity or notion of Kiruna as a particular place for space activities. Although this form of place-making has occurred largely through spontaneous processes, it was also the result of intentional efforts.

Together, these different place-making processes have formed the `space town' of Kiruna.

This is an early draft excerpt from the "convolutes" included in the author's later PhD titled "Breathtaking Greenhouse Parastructures." The work is related to the author's exhibition at Savvy Contemporary in Berlin (31.08.– 06.10.2019). The focus of the research is on exploring the technology of the greenhouse as a specimen, display, and virtual reality. The author believes that the greenhouse plays a significant role in shaping the industrial, misogynist, and ethnocentric conception of natural science and history. The greenhouse acts as a dividing force between humans and nature, perpetuating the illusion of interior and exterior spaces. The author aims to break free from this binary understanding by reticulating away from the messianic promises and colonial violence associated with "greenhouse." They seek to uproot the colonial drive embedded in their externalization of knowledge and explore alternative paths for relating to the object of colonial-industrial capitalism. The presented excerpt offers a glimpse into the author's perspective as a Puerto Rican & Caribbean artist and invites further exploration of the PhD work.

Breathtaking Greenhouse Parastructures är en doktorsavhandling som supplementerar Walter Benjamins oavslutade Passage-arbete. Supplementet har formen av en skulptural, historisk och teknisk deposition av ’växthus’ som oscillerar mellan en förfluten bakgrund och en framtida förgrund till Benjamins teatrala behandling av Parisarkaderna. Från mitt karibiska perspektiv erbjuder denna oscillerande behandling av ’växthus’ ett stöd för att aktivera följande fråga: Är kolonialt minne drivkraften hos global uppvärmning? Denna fråga har lett mig till att hypotesen att ’växthus’-tekniken är – bortom metaforen – det illusoriska (av)förkroppsligandet av den giftiga binära uppdelningen av interiör & exteriör som formar olika inflytelserika ramverk såsom den moderna & marxistiska idén om överbyggnad, liksom det förflutna & framtida hos de västerländska naturvetenskaperna (och deras historier). På grund av denna illusoriska, spektrala och paranormala kraft, blir ’växthus’ på en gång det västerländska koloniala ställandet av det messianska löftet för att bevara biologiska historia och den/det messianska lösningen/botemedlet för att undertrycka de trauman som styr global uppvärmning. Dessutom, på grund av denna kraftfulla (av)förkroppsligade karaktär, är den robusta analysen av den mångfaldiga instrumentaliseringen av ’växthus’ satt att spela en primär roll i deponering av den geologiska tidslinjen i antropocen. Medan bok-supplementet är själva avhandlingen (som en uppackning av nämnda hypotetiska upptäckter) så bygger avhandlingsarbetet också på två andra forskningsdelar: en installation, Anarquivo Negantrópico, och en online journal, Intransitive Journal. Avhandling erbjuder som helhet ett fält från vilket kan bedömas mitt vidare experimenterande med infrastrukturer, epistemiska saker och sociala piedestaler. Avhandlingen reviderar dessutom den så kallade glömda listan ‘Epistemologica’ (det kategoriska västerländska utställandet och fenomenotekniker) för att forma min studie och praktik till en anpassningsbar, försiktig och differentierad sorts epistemológica, en försiktig studie och praktik som vi kan dela som objekt-relationer som proportionella (upp)visningar mer-än-mänskliga perspektiv för att mediera och hela formerna och krafterna hos klimatkrisen.

This essay looks to decolonise the technological history of the greenhouse through arts research. My decolonial research approach is rooted in the forms and forces, the geoaesthetics that shape my life and upbringing on the colony that still is my home-island of Puerto Rico, as part of the broader Caribbean milieu and diaspora. Over time, from that life and research, an intuition emerged, one that led me to sense how the greenhouse strongly represents man’s misleading delusion of mastery over, and disconnection from nature. It is from that intuition and ensuing research that I set-forth the following hypothesis: if the greenhouse metaphor embodies the dissociative, colonial reflex driving global warming, then the invention of the greenhouse must be one of the beginnings to the geological timeline of the Anthropocene. 

Walter Benjamin deemed his Arcades Project [Das Passagen-Werk (Mit Bindestrich und Werk mit Capital W)] “the theatre of all my struggles and all my ideas.” As a vast accumulation of materials, it had become for him a literary laboratory for testing social, critical, and spatial ideas. The co-authors here present an exposition where they look to reactivate that ‘theatre’ to search, test, and draw from each other alternative recursions for their respective practices. Their respective discourses are intersected through a voluntary 'trialogue' that plays between three different roles aiming to diverge from the traditional form of a Q&A. The exchanges gravitate around ‘greenhouse’ as the historiographic display structure to the Arcades, as well as to Global Warming. But, the format also triggers ‘indirections’ urging unforeseen aspects that may further research and revisions of the Arcades. For the authors, such indirections actualise and translate, yet again, other dormant aspects of each others perceptions about Benjamin. Ultimately, joined by the attitude to share and reactivate that ‘theatre-laboratory’ with you—the reader and exposition visitor—the actors look for cues that encourage further procedures of experimentation and reflexion.

Motorspriten kommer! löd budskapet i början av 1900-talet. Liknande utfästelser om alternativa drivmedel har gång på gång hörts genom historien. Men de oljebaserade bränslena har behållit sitt grepp om transportsystemet, trots att de alltid ansetts problematiska. Varför?

Den här boken handlar om olika försök att utveckla och förverkliga alternativ till oljebaserade drivmedel i Sverige. Den spänner över ett drygt sekel, från slutet av 1800-talet och framåt, och behandlar bland annat sulfitsprit, syntetisk bensin, gengas, metanol och den första och andra generationens etanol. I fokus står motiven bakom dessa alternativ varför de har ansetts angelägna och önskvärda liksom de problem och strukturella hinder som de har mött och alltjämt fortsätter att möta. Boken ger historiska och medievetenskapliga perspektiv på de pågående försöken till en omställning på drivmedelsområdet och bidrar till kunskap av värde för såväl beslutsfattare som allmänhet.

Boken bygger på forskning som utfördes inom det tvärvetenskapliga projektet Framtidens drivmedel? Biobränslen i historisk och kulturell belysning. Den är skriven av samtliga forskare i projektet Annika Egan Sjölander, Helena Ekerholm, Jenny Eklöf, Erland Mårald, Christer Nordlund och Bosse Sundin i samarbete med Henrik Lång.

This thesis investigate Swedish policy-making concerning promotion of wood gas and ethanol distilled from fermented sulphite lye as domestic fuel alternatives in the Interwar years and World War II. With a departure point in the theories of social constructions of technology (SCOT), the sociology of expectations and Thomas P. Hughe’s socio-technical systems I analyse the measures that were undertaken in these efforts, the arguments put forward for and against the ethanol and wood gas projects and how the efforts turned out. I also investigate how the interpretations of ethanol and wood gas as fuel alternatives changed from the Interwar period on through World War II and what consequences this had for ethanol and wood gas policy immediately after World War II. Source material includes Parliament and Government records, cabinet meeting files, governmental commissions, authority archives, technical evaluations and handbooks and scientific medical publications.

Ethanol and wood gas were promoted from a nationalist vantage point. The Interwar debate was imbued with visions of national techno-scientific prowess in a perceived ongoing global contest for technological and scientific advancement, of which achieving autarky, self-sufficiency on important raw materials and industrial products, was an ideal for some. Ethanol and wood gas were also promoted as means for creating a lucrative new market for the forestry industry, which also held a prominent position in nationalist visions of technology. Expectations of a new war also motivated the promotion of ethanol and wood gas as national fuels. Measures for promotion included tax exemptions, sales guarantees and legislation for mandatory ethanol purchase for all petrol importing companies and gasifier loan funds. Political conflicts mainly centred around the principles of free trade as opposed to protectionism, proper use of tax funds and whether the potentials of the fuel alternatives were rhetorically exaggerated. During World War II ethanol and wood gas in particular served as important petrol surrogates. The increased wood gas use led to negative interpretations of wood gas a fuel alternative due to its hazardous, dirty and time-consuming maintenance and the changed driving behaviour it required from its users compared to petrol or ethanol fuelled automobiles. Compared to wood gas, ethanol was appreciated for its socio-technical similarities to petrol, but production was after the war deemed difficult to maintain during wartime. Whereas wood gas remained an important stand-by surrogate during the cold war, Swedish politicians lost interest in ethanol of the kind that was promoted in the Interwar years. 

This article investigates the political efforts to establish ethanol as a national fuel in Sweden in 1924 - 1934. Drawing on official records - the transcripts of parliamentary debates, governmental commission reports, and government bills and legislation - ethanol is considered as a technological and political artefact, with a particular focus on a strongly ideological fuel policy intended to bring about technological change.

At the time, considerable political effort went into finding and establishing a national fuel, efficient and abundant enough to support the nation's requirements for essential products. This was by no means a uniquely Swedish undertaking. Nation-states all over the industrialized world sought domestic fuel alternatives, prompted by the expected depletion of oil reserves and the fear of renewed international conflict. In that period, Swedish ethanol was distilled from fermented sulphite lye, a waste product from paper and pulp production. It was therefore presented as a lucrative solution for a waste problem, and, as it was produced within the nation-state's borders, a promising wartime surrogate. However, ethanol was more expensive than petrol, which made it less marketable during peacetime. To cover losses, the ethanol industry requested state support in the form of tax exemptions and legislation to force petrol importers to blend ethanol into all marketed petrol.

Those who argued in favour of the ethanol industry's requests were mainly right-wing politicians, who based their arguments on a nationalist ideology that national collective benefit justified state intervention in the free market. Opposition was mainly mounted by a faction in the Social Democrat party. For them, any measure that made products more expensive for consumers was unthinkable. They also argued that the ethanol industry had reached the end of the line; any production without the means and capacity to support itself should make way for its competitors. Concerns about the anticipated international conflict, however, led the Social Democrat minister for finance, Ernst Wigforss, to concede to the demands of the ethanol industry. In 1934, he thus proposed legislation that largely corresponded to claims made by right-wing politicians and the influential forestry industry, of which ethanol production was a part.

On a political level, Swedish transport ethanol has always been embedded in visions of an alternative, brighter future. Arguments in support of ethanol have been reiterated throughout the 20^th and 21^st century, exhibiting a striking stability over time. At the same time, the contexts in which arguments for ethanol have been raised have undergone dramatic shifts. This article investigates the historical contingencies of three empirical cases, covering the interwar years, the aftermath of the oil crises of the 1970s and the 21^st century's concerns over global warming. It concludes with the observation that despite political convictions about ethanol's commercial, military and environmental potential, domestic production has not managed to take off on its own. It has relied on state support such as tax exemptions, it has been dependent on other industries for feedstock provision and its technical superiority is still waiting for market confirmation.

The existence of nonisothermal transport of liquids through a gelatin membrane was first described by Lippmann in 1907, and 5 years later, it was investigated by Aubert in more detail using membranes of gelatin pig’s bladder, parchment paper and viscose. In this phenomenon, there is no liquid/vapor phase transition and it is known as thermo-osmosis (TO) or thermal osmosis (TO). Lippmann also observed TO in air, obviously without prior knowledge of the work of Feddersen and Reynolds. However, at that time the lack of theory on irreversible processes prevented the progress towards understanding this phenomenon.

Universities around the world have increasingly turned to digital infrastructures as a way to revamp the arts and humanities. This article contributes a fresh understanding by examining the material development of HumlabX, a research laboratory for digital humanities at Umeå University, Sweden. Specifically, we approach the empirical case as a timeline of research funding, projects, events, and deliverables to examine how the research laboratory as an organizational and material space developed and evolved in relation to new technology investments. Based on our analysis, we argue that while digital research infrastructures can, indeed, stimulate innovation in and around research, aimed to produce new knowledge, digital technologies carry social and material implications that affect organizational processes. We show that while knowledge production processes at HumlabX were highly influenced by the infrastructural legacy of the past, they indeed directed scholars toward innovation. By discussing these implications in detail, we move beyond the debate of humanities qua digital, and demonstrate the need for scholars of digital humanities to engage in the development of policies for digital research infrastructures. Using a Swedish case study, we argue that research laboratories for the digital humanities must be scrutinized and should be fully exposed as socio-material organizations that develop, and should develop, over time. In particular, we stress the need to ensure that digital humanities laboratories are sustainable and open for redevelopment.

This paper discusses inquiries into everyday life and domestic work in 1940s Sweden, with focus on the research initiatives conducted at the Hemmens forskningsinstitut (HFI, the Home Research Institute) from its establishment in 1944. The research into the conditions and tools for domestic work conducted there, has in previous historical research been approached from perspectives of the history of technology and consumption. I argue that the methods developed for researching and designing tools for domestic the HFI should be understood as early examples of user-centered design practices, such as user studies, ergonomics and iterative prototyping. I further propose that the user-centered and participatory design practices that later emerged in Scandinavia, in the 1960s and 1970s, owe much of their conceptual foundations to the early design practices developed at HFI. Histories of user-centered design have previously located the formation of these kinds of design practices to military contexts in the 1940s and 1950s, and histories of participatory designing often point to the 1960s and 1970s as the period in which collaborative designing emerged. Presenting the HFI’s design practices – which were based in feminist initiatives towards re-shaping everyday life – as central to the emergence of participatory and user-centered design sheds a different kind of light on contemporary design methods and on the conceptual spaces they open up towards. Reconsidering where designing takes place, and where ‘designers’ are found to be active, historically as well as in present-day practice, can re-form the histories we tell about what designing has been and project different trajectories of what design can become.

Felix Holm is co-founder of the Maker Station makerspace in Cape Town, South Africa, a coordinator of the Cape Town maker movement, and contributor to a pan-Afrikan makerspace founders’ network. Suné Stassen is founding director and custodian of Open Design Afrika (ODA), a festival and activation platform that advocates, demonstrates and educates how design and creativity should be used for social, environmental and economic transformation. Over many years these two organisations have made significant contributions to reposition the  roles of design, making, creativity and innovation within the greater ecosystem and helped build a healthier and more prosperous South Africa. Some of these efforts also contributed to Cape Town’s proposal, submitted before the city was eventually crowned as World Design  Capital in 2014. Maker Station and Open  Design Afrika believe that fostering people’s ability to become more active and  responsive global citizens is key to increasing impact, improving more lives and initiating work towards achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals as a  collective effort to design our new  preferred futures. Their efforts bring to light contributions to DIY making and hacking and alternative histories less addressed in academic research. Felix (FH) and Suné (SS) spoke to Cindy Kohtala (CK) and Yana Boeva (YB) about their passions and the recent histories of South African  DIY making over video-conference, mere  days before South Africa went into lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, for this issue.

Although fuel cells have been considered promising technology since the nineteenth century, fresh expectations – expressed by engineers, company leaders, politicians and journalists – began to flourish in the 1990s later on associated with the vision of a ‘hydrogen economy.’ Inspired by research in the history and sociology of expectations, the present paper analyzes this recent history of global fuel cells and hydrogen potentials as played out in the USA, EU, and especially Sweden. It is demonstrated that automotive shows, the mass media, and forecast projects were significant arenas in promoting and circulating the idea that fuel cells represented energy efficient and clean technology that almost by necessity would be utilized in the ‘vehicles of the future.’ This paper also highlights the framing of water both as a potential source of energy and as a symbolic purifying bath that would restore an environmentally friendly society, interpreted as an ecomodern utopia.

Johansson, Evelina. 2018. Om- och tillbyggnationer samt renoveringar av Sankt Larskyrkan i Linköping

Johansson, Evelina. 2018. Reconstructions, extensions and renovations of St Lars Church in Linköping

St Lars Church is a white stone church located in central Linköping. In this thesis I will cover the processes behind the two most recent renovations of St Lars Church. The earlier of the two renovations was carried out in the 1950’s. The main purpose of this renovation was to literally prevent a total collapse of the church structure. Adding modern technology to the church was a priority at the most recent renovation in 2016, mainly in order to create an atmosphere which would make everyone feel welcome. I will also cover the media attention that these renovations attracted.

The material used in this thesis includes available literature, archive material, and interviews of key individuals from the most recent renovation. I have also visited the church to study the most recent renovation and gain insight into the excavations that were part of the process.

Historical records only describe the larger scaled renovations. This has led to a greater subjective valuation put into the decisions and discussions put forth during these processes. Individuals part of the historical renovations have consciously, or sub-consciously, been influenced by preceding historical ideas. Studying a historical period of time in the context of current influences lies at the hearth of the history of ideas, all the while understanding that absolute truths will never be discovered.

New Natures broadens the dialogue between the disciplines of science and technology studies (STS) and environmental history in hopes of deepening and even transforming understandings of human-nature interactions. The volume presents historical studies that engage with key STS theories, offering models for how these theories can help crystallize central lessons from empirical histories, facilitate comparative analysis, and provide a language for complicated historical phenomena. Overall, the collection exemplifies the fruitfulness of cross-disciplinary thinking.

This paper explores how hunters have integrated digital mapping and GPS units in their hunting practices. The act of navigating a landscape, of being able to place yourself, your quarry, your fellow hunters, and your dogs in a mental representation of the world around you has long been a critical skill for hunters, one that requires use of all the senses. This way of interacting with nature has been a key element in narratives about hunting. In the last decade, however, digital and geolocative technologies have become far more common in hunting, enabling hunters to see their exact location, as well as their dogs, on a handheld GPS unit. Taking as its starting point how Scandinavian hunters have a long tradition of actively reflecting on their own practices, the paper will examine what kinds of discussions the hunters had surrounding the introduction of GPS tracking and other communication technologies, as well as how they have been implemented in the field.

The paper acknowledges that hunting practices deeply embedded in larger structures and traditions, such as the allotment of hunting rights, and of historical transitions from hunting as a sustenance strategy to a leisure activity. The paper will discuss what influence geolocative technologies have had on the relationship between local and non-local (urban or international) hunters and how they have changed the dynamics and landscape use of hunting. While it can be argued that Swedish hunters generally hunt in local areas that they know rather well, it could also be that they enable hunters to navigate new and to them unknown landscapes. Hunters may also interact with nature, each other, and their hunting equipment such as dogs in novel ways with GPS.

The talk will deepen the study of technology in hunting through analyzing the circulating relationship between one particular set of digital technologies and the knowledge and practice of hunting. In general, histories of hunting tend to pay much attention to weapons and their development from the dawn of time until present, but spends far less time on exploring the role of the other technologies. The general descriptions of technology to a large degree align with what historians of technology classify as internalistc studies of technology; chronological stories of changes in technical details with little regard for the interaction between technology, culture, and society at large. 

Consider an empty bottle or can, one of the hundreds of billions of beverage containers that are discarded worldwide every year. Empty containers have been at the center of intense political controversies, technological innovation processes, and the modern environmental movement. Making a Green Machine examines the development of the Scandinavian beverage container deposit-refund system, which has the highest return rates in the world, from 1970 to present. Finn Arne Jørgensen investigates the challenges the system faced when exported internationally and explores the critical role of technological infrastructures and consumer convenience in modern recycling. His comparative framework charts the complex network of business and political actors involved in the development of the reverse vending machine (RVM) and bottle deposit legislation to better understand the different historical trajectories empty beverage containers have taken across markets, including the U.S. The RVM has served as more than a hole in the wall - it began simply as a tool for grocers who had to handle empty refillable glass bottles, but has become a green machine to redeem the empty beverage container, helping both business and consumers participate in environmental actions.

The leisure cabin is a deeply entrenched structure in Norwegian nature and culture. Close to half a million cabins dot the countryside in a nation of less than five million inhabitants. The cabin lifestyle is also rooted in history and tradition, in an idea of escaping from the stress of urban life to relax and “recharge one’s batteries” in nature. While this sounds anti-modern, cabin owners have eagerly adopted modern comfort technologies in order to make cabin living more convenient.

This paper will explore the historical changes in the experience of night at the cabin, particularly focusing on the tensions between “artificial” electric light and “natural” darkness. Pitch-black nights, natural sounds, and starry night skies are important elements in the national mythology of authentic cabin living, yet these natural experiences has all but disappeared for a majority of cabin owners today. In many cabin developments, the light and noise pollution from electrical devices have more in common with suburbia than with the mythical isolated cabin in the remote wilderness.

The question of electrical light thus leads us to consider Norwegians’ attitude toward nature and how it has changed since the early 1950s. This development reminds us how cabins and urban homes, and nature and culture are tightly connected.

Our ideas and experiences of nature have become entangled with digital media in interesting and sometimes unexpected ways over the last few decades. Using Google Street View’s digital, screen-based mediation of Grand Canyon as a starting point, I will discuss where the tools, methods, and research agendas of the digital humanities and the environmental humanities meet. Both of these interdisciplinary fields are in rapid growth and are often invoked in discussions about the relevance and future of the humanities. What can we find of value where the two fields meet?

The technological mediation of near and distant landscapes have long fascinated scholars and the public alike, and it seems like this interest peaks around times of large-scale technological transition, when new modes of both transportation and mediation become available. Few scholars have analyzed this relationship between technology, media, and the perception of landscape as convincingly as Wolfgang Schivelbusch, who famously argued that the landscape perceived by travelers was filtered through the machine ensemble of the railroad system. This article brings Schivelbusch’s thesis into the digital age as a way of examining the spatiality of digital media and the natural world. The article analyzes a series of technologically mediated digital representations of travel and movement through landscapes, in particular the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation’s “slow travel” series of digitally enhanced TV programs. These highly popular mediations of railroad or boat travel challenge Schivelbusch’s ideas of speed, distance, and experience of landscapes, but also direct our attention towards the role of digital media in making sense of a changing world.

Scandinavians like to think of themselves as being particularly close to nature. Identifying exactly what this nature is, however, is tricky. This paper historicizes the making of Norwegian nature by following the leisure cabin from 1850 until present. Cabins serve as gateways to nature for Norwegians, but have also permanently altered and influenced what we think of as natural. This paper examines how the infrastructures connecting people to cabins and to scenic landscapes have now become an integrated part of the Norwegian landscape. Large parts of Norway’s nature cannot be experienced outside of this infrastructure; at the same time, it is precisely through using this infrastructure Norwegians have come to know and appreciate nature. In conclusion, the paper will argue that sustainable environmental management should consider the history of how we have come to use and experience nature, but not look back to an idea of pristine, untouched nature for solutions.