In this talk, I will present the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS). Born in the 1970s at the crossroad between epistemology, sociology and history, the field proposes to enrich traditional philosophy of science by including the scientists as humans and members of society in the analysis. The goal of the talk is to illustrate how this field can provide us reflexivity on our own research and its interaction with society.

I will introduce the starting point of STS by briefly addressing the well-known problem of science neutrality. I will draw three areas of STS to illustrate how a change of perspective may alter the way of we do research and generate interesting research questions in computer science that may be more aligned with our values. Examples will be drawn from Botascopia, an interdisciplinary research between computer scientists, biologists and social scientists, using plant identification as a place to experiment different relationships between humans, nature and technology.