These [scientific engineering] microhistories, however, cannot overrule the macrohistorical patterns and trends, any more than the macrohistory should not make us blind to local and temporal irregularities and contingencies.
What these microhistorical irregularities and contingencies reflect is the essential instability inherent in boundary objects.
The flexibility of a boundary object induces various, and even conflicting, elements as its constituents, but the same flexibility contributes to its instability. However, this instability can be a resource for its dynamics. A flexible, unstable boundary object is like the motion of the bicycle: the instability remains constructive as long as it is pushed forward
— Hong, Sungook (1999) ‘Historiographical layers in the relationship between science and technology’, History and Technology, 15: 4, 289 — 311
