Re: computer "upgrades"

Susan Leigh Star (s-star1 who-is-at uiuc.edu)
Thu, 28 Aug 1997 12:38:30 -0600

Hi Mike, My take is that different communities of practice have
naturalized the artifacts at different rates or in different ways. So a
computer occupies a very different location in a trajectory of
naturalization for a computer scientist than for a new end user. Also
different forms of complexity. But in communicating about this to each
other, neither one may realize these differences. All sorts of Batesonian
tangles result. (Well, it IS arrogance on the part of the more powerful
person too, of course.)

This is a little beside your question, though. What does it mean to
attribute too much agency to an artifact? Anthropomorphizing? Delegating
moral responsibility? Dehumanizing or objectifying? I think the "too much"
may be in what Latour calls the "great divide." That is, the
humans-with-mediating artifacts system that Bateson discussed, and Linnda
framed so well in her last posting, has been broken up, wrongfully. Once
broken, we can think of ourselves as devoid of artifacts -- thus leading to
the silly mentalisms Hutchins is attacking. And the idealisms that Dewey
was after, too, so long ago in the reflex arc article.

One of the enduring questions I have of ANT, that I feel AT has answered
more successfully, is: what is the nature of the links between people and
our things? What forms, what ranges -- and in Linnda's phrase, what
recurring configurations?

L*

>
>"The upgrade phenomenon is a kind of infrastructural arrogance."
>
>I would really like to hear from those engaged in the AT/ANT (Activity
>Theory/Actor network people" discuss this general tendency. Is it not
>the "error of attribution" that attribues too much agency to the artifact?
>Simultaneously, Ed Hutchins says that standard Cog Sci attributes too
>much to the inside the head stuff. There is a deep vein here to be
>explored and lived with.
>mike
>-----