Cybersecurity Research Meets Science and Technology Studies

As technology rapidly advances and these changes are prevalent in modern society, the end users of technology have had widely divided views on it. In “Why and how technology matters,” Bijker presents three main views on technology: static tools, mere artifacts of social activities, and knowledgebase of the society. Similar views can be applied to cybertechnology as well. The paper describes how the first two views are dominant in the current society regarding cybertechnology. It then suggests the third view, albeit less popular, can complement the shortcomings of the first two.
The first view describes cybersecurity from a purely technical perspective in the domain of computer science. It primarily focuses on solving problems, or vulnerabilities, in cybersecurity through technological means and coincides with how some people define cybersecurity as “ensuring that the specification is followed.” Consequently, political considerations are excluded from this view. This has been a somewhat convenient move to workers in cybersecurity, as international agreements in cyberspace still have not been achieved, and dissociation from politics grants some degrees of freedom. The second view looks at cybersecurity in a purely social science-based lenz. Technology in cybersecurity becomes a mere tool used for maintaining power by certain entities in cyberspace. While this view describes the clear importance of politics in cybersecurity that the first view lacked, it is still limited, as it does not consider technological impossibilities, and users of this view often do not share the same exact definition of cybersecurity. The last view, which provides the most complete picture, combines the previous two. It considers cybersecurity from the perspective of human knowledge in both technology and politics. This then enables people to ask critical questions, such as “Who holds the political and technological power in cyberspace?”