This article is a part of a series about stuckness in science and technology. Read the introduction to the series here. On a sunny day in November 2021, I was taking a walk with two forest scientists, Junho and Minho (pseudonyms). Junho was then working as a junior researcher at a premier research institution in South Korea, whereas Minho was a Ph.D. candidate at a university lab. During my fieldwork with forest scientists from 2017 to 2023, I frequently encountered growing expectations that new field technologies—drones, high-resolution satellite sensors, or LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) devices—would replace some of the traditional fieldwork components that depended on diameter tapes, calipers, hypsometers, or increment coring. For many younger scientists, these field techniques were considered notoriously time-consuming, toilsome, and costly. While many of my interlocutors called such expectations a “hype,” Junho and Minho, as technophiles both in their early 30s, were excited about the introduction of such technologies to their fields. (read more...)