ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the role of prototypes as evidence in action. Prototypes translate technological visions, roadmaps, plans, and designs into material artifacts. They are both epistemic objects that are supposed to facilitate learning, and material promises of a realizable future. Prototyping turns an intangible and inaccessible future into a tangible and accessible object. It transforms expectations into experiences, fictions into facts. Prototypes are not only relevant inside the laboratory; they also connect technoscientific designs with contexts of application and public spheres. Prototypes may be used to convince others that a technology is possible (or maybe even probable and/or desirable). As objectivations of present futures, they operate as a medium to present the future to others. Hence, the author suggests that prototypes provide subjective and intersubjective evidence for technoscientific possibilities.
