The co-production of technology and society is today a widely accepted notion. On the other hand, there is arguably a puzzle or “paradox” of technology where the means par excellence to higher-level (e.g., socio-environmental) goals, comes into view as an end in itself. We hold that to overcome the paradox, and to better understand co-production of technology and society, one needs to distinguish between near-term/concrete and long-term/abstract institutional contexts. We draw on an extended framework of practical reasoning and argumentation to refashion the distinction made in the literature repeatedly but in an inconsistent manner between concrete/particular (technologies) and abstract/general (technology), and put it in a temporal-teleological perspective. In a study of interviews (N=25) with Portuguese low-carbon energy transition actors, we show that (1) in the near-term/concrete context of renewable energy technologies, technological change is discussed as embedded in the institutional framework, and (2) when the spatio-temporal horizons of the discussion is enlarged, technology features in the discourse an independent external force. While particular technologies feature as means in a primarily goals-based reasoning, technology-in-general enters into discussion mainly with its consequences. We conclude by emphasizing the need to pay attention to transfer and interference of meaning in the discourse concerning multi-layered and multi-phased (environmental) policy problems.
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