sociotechnology

Sociotechnology (short for "social technology") is the study of processes on the intersection of society and technology. Vojinović and Abbott define it as "the study of processes in which the social and the technical are indivisibly combined". Sociotechnology is an important part of socio-technical design, which is defined as "designing things that participate in complex systems that have both social and technical aspects".

The term has been attributed to Mario Bunge. He defines it as a grouping of social engineering and management science. He sees it thus as a form of technology, distinguished from other branches of it such as engineering, biotechnology, information technology and general technology. Its goal is to help engineer sociosystems and evaluate their performance, while making use of social science research. In short, sociotechnology can be seen as the creation, modification and maintenance of social systems.