Special Issue on New Space Entrepreneurship and Additive Manufacturing (3D Printing) as Challenges to Actor-Network Theory

The idea of this special volume was triggered by an astonishment that came to me more than a year ago and that took of the key question behind the IJANTTI call for papers, announced in the spring of 2014: why there are so few analyses of emerging and yet unestablished firmly technolo-gies? I was surprised that we, the community of actor-network theory (ANT) researchers, are about to miss two of the profound technological and industrial developments that are taking place in the last decade – 3D printing and new private space entrepreneurship, and which today are fascinating millions of talented young and not so young people all over the world. Are ANT and studies of science and technologies (STS) in general about to score another prominent failure they registered some seven years ago when their offspring – the social studies of finances-missed the evidences of structural tensions and misconduct in trading rooms and financial communities they studied, and practically remained unaware – unlike some dissident stockbrokers-of preconditions that triggered global financial crisis. Are we locked to the old philosophical stigma to come as the owl of Minerva only at dusk after the battle, being unable to say something important about now?-Can we analyze the current efforts of new breed of space entrepreneurs who are literally blowing up the focalized oligopolies in the space industry in USA and Europe? Can we say something valuable on disruptive changes the 3D printing induces in manufacturing and other centuries-old industries, and which are about to revolutionize once again the biotechnologies