Techno-Fixes: On the Non-Disruptive Disruptions of Cultured Meat, Social Freezing and AI Assistants

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

There is an ongoing debate about the capacity of technologies to solve social problems. In this article, we analyze the sociomaterial scripts of three techno-fixes: cultured meat, social egg freezing, and AI assistants. Using a mix of ethnography, interviews, and discourse analysis, our case studies arrive at three findings. First, techno-fixes do not lead to a world with blurred boundaries and hybrid entities. On the contrary, clear images of nature, society, and technology serve as valuable resources in innovation processes. Second, technical solutions are based on three incompatible scripts. This makes it possible to revolutionize and save the world without changing it. We use the term non-disruptive disruption for this paradoxical invention. Third, techno-fixes are not science fiction, even if we encounter cells stored in cryobanks, steaks grown in bioreactors, or super-intelligent entities living in clouds. The doctors, biochemists, and programmers backstage reproduce social habits by incorporating conservative images into their innovations. By focusing on sociomaterial scripts, this article provides an analytical matrix for better understanding and evaluating techno-fixes in various areas of capitalist societies.