Mr Sebastian Ureta - Center for Technology & Society, Technical University of Berlin
Personal InformationCountry: Germany City: Berlin Nationality: Chilean Personal Page: Click here |
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Research InterestsGeneral Research Interests: My general research interest is on users of technologies from a science and technology studies (STS) perspective. More particularly I’m interested in explore how the concept of the “user” is enacted both by human actors who use and appropriate technologies in their everyday lives and as a device that large technical system (government agencies, transport authorities, etc.) develop to render manageable the human actors with whom they are supposed to interact. PhD/Postdoctoral Research Title: Constructing Users for Public Transport: The case of Transantiago PhD/Postdoctoral Research Abstract:: On February 10th 2007 a new public transport plan, called 'Transantiago', started in the city of Santiago, Chile. Among its main measures included a complete reconfiguration of the bus routes, the interconnection between buses and metro networks, the introduction of a contact-less payment card, the development of new infrastructure and, in general terms, a whole new way to organize and live daily urban mobility in the city. The general objective was to improve the quality and comfort of the public transport in the city, especially for low income population who uses it more frequently. But the results of the implementation of the plan were disastrous. Not only the travels by public transport become longer and highly uncomfortable, but almost every aspect of the new plan seemed not to be working properly with the consequence that Transantiago has become one of the biggest social and political crises in the country since the return of democracy in 1990. In this context this research project looks for study Transantiago from one particular perspective: the development of the concept of the “user of Transantiago” and its implication for the implementation, and subsequent crisis, of the plan. The guiding idea is that in the development of Transantiago several actors, both public and private, were involved, each of them dealing with different aspects of it: buses, routes, information, financial aspects, etc. During their planning of the different aspects of the plan these actors developed, explicitly or implicitly, several versions of the “user of Transantiago” or some sort of prototypes or scripts of the passengers that Transantiago will supposedly have to transport from the beginning of the plan. Afterwards these multiple “users”, as multiple as the actors involved in their development, were used as a standpoint to plan and implement almost every other aspect of Transantiago. Curriculum Vita: Download |
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