Recursive Learning through Demos: Using Public Demonstrations of Technology as Project Management Tools

This paper shows how public demonstrations of technology ('demos') are used within various institutions as tools for high-tech project management, and more particularly for recursive learning. My argument is based on the results of surveys I have carried out in recent years in several European and US institutions of the use of demos for the development of technological devices, such as computer software. Demos are not simply used as ways to promote or sell products in the vein of Steve Jobs'famous Apple demos. In many cases I have studied, engineers, researchers and executives run demos of prototypes at various stages of their projects for learning purposes. They observe reactions to their demos in a methodical way, especially the ways in which their audience might appropriate the devices, and the adjustments required for the prototypes in order to improve their adoption. Demos allow demonstrators to collect what is often very detailed information on the practices of their future partners or clients, and also to glean propositions for the elaboration of new versions and uses of their devices. Demos thus help demonstrators to define or redefine successive stages of their projects in line with the comments and criticisms expressed by different audiences. These sometimes institutionalized uses of demonstration-trials contribute most notably to the structuring of projects around 'versions', and in some cases to a rapid irreversibility where content is concerned. They put demos at the heart of a set of almost invisible dynamics: dynamics that bind (rather than divide) the production and the promotion of science and technology in many institutions.