Wiebe Bijker

dike breach in the Netherlands in 1953 when young Bijker was two years old and later became deputy director of the Delft Hydraulics Laboratory.^[1] Presumably, the unique fact of parts of the Netherlands being below sea level, the well-known concerns in innovation surrounding this condition for centuries, and his father's involvement all contributed to the younger Bijker's interest in technology studies.^[2]

Social Construction of Technology-approach, (SCOT)^[3] their 1984 article "The Social Construction of Facts and Artefacts: or How the Sociology of Science and the Sociology of Technology might Benefit Each Other" is cited as the first substantive work to elaborate on the SCOT perspective.^[4] Central to the SCOT theoretical framework is the idea of 'interpretive flexibility', that is that the products of scientific and technological endeavours are not fixed on a given trajectory determined by a physical nature, but rather interact with the social environments in which they are produced.^[4] To illustrate their theorectical argument Pinch and Bijker, in their 1984 article, use the development of the bicycle and the substantive shaping of this through the influences of various user groups, manufacturers and interested others.^[5]