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The Berlin Key or How to Do things with Words
... Common features include rejecting predetermined hierarchical scale and Euclidean space (Howitt 2001;Bear and Eden 2008;Jones et al. 2016), tracing heterogeneous networks (Edwards 2003;Massey 2005), viewing space as assembled through more-than-human relations (Braun 2005;Panelli 2010;Bear 2017), exploring how "acting at a distance" links near and far (Legg 2009;Featherstone 2011), questioning how power operates across space (Massey 1999;Swyngedouw 2000;St. Martin 2001;Jasanoff 2008;Allen 2011;McCann 2011;Woodward, Jones, and Marston 2012;Larkin 2013;Campling and Colás 2018), and theorizing the role of materiality (Latour 2000(Latour , 2002Li 2014, Turner 2016Turner and Wiber 2020). But while ANT draws attention to the ways in which assemblages stabilize and cohere across spaces, assemblage draws greater attention to the fluidity and potential for ruptures through changing affective relations that produce sociomaterial assemblages (Müller and Schurr 2016;Turner 2016;Marres 2020). ...
... Viewing bounded spaces as enacted through networks and contested through association and translation draws attention to motivations, values, and affect. Following Latour (2000), we see both materiality and normativity as under-theorized, especially in what Campling and Colás (2018) call "terraqueous territoriality." Latour (2000) notes how the Berlin key requires coresidents "to conform to a strict collective discipline" (p. ...
... Following Latour (2000), we see both materiality and normativity as under-theorized, especially in what Campling and Colás (2018) call "terraqueous territoriality." Latour (2000) notes how the Berlin key requires coresidents "to conform to a strict collective discipline" (p. 17) with regard to the timing of access to their building, a morality enforced through material means. ...
Federal lobster fishing area (LFA) boundaries are part of the infrastructure controlling the temporal and spatial scale of lobster fishing in Atlantic Canada. Changes in the materiality of fishing and accompanying challenges to normative orders affecting access rules have together destabilized the spatial boundaries of LFAs. Changes in lobster distribution, gear innovations to fish in deeper waters, legal maneuverings over licensing, and competition with aquaculture for marine space all challenge LFA boundaries, which changes the distribution of fishing industry benefits and disrupts long-standing local values. Federal managers of the fishery struggle to deal with new assemblages of technology and law and how they interact with marine space. Examining the technology/legal pluralism nexus and their relationship with administrative lines in the water exposes how both affect more-than-human-spatial assemblages.
... In this network conception of agency, a decisive role is also assigned to the ability of an actor, for example an object, to act as a mediator, contributing to the formation of hybrids. To explain this process, Latour (1991b) uses the description of the functioning of a singular object: the Berlin key. The story is that of a condominium doorman whose main program could be summarized in the form of an utterance like: "please kindly always lock the door at night and leave it open during the day". ...
... The program of action is then for the driver to wear a seat belt; otherwise, it would be impossible to drive. In the case of the Berlin Key, the program of action is to relock the door behind you rather than to close the door behind you (Latour, 2012;Latour et al., 1992). Besides those examples, he also defines the concepts in his book Pandora's Hope -Essays on the Reality of Science Studies: PROGRAMS OF ACTION, ANTIPROGRAMS: Terms from the sociology of technology which have been used to give technical artifacts their active and often polemical character. ...
Purpose
The aim of the paper is to demonstrate how programs of action and anti-programs, concepts developed by Bruno Latour, are of excellent value in interpreting current world developments through a study of the effects and responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Design/methodology/approach
The study was inspired by actor-network theory (ANT) and Bruno Latour's inclusion of nonhuman actors. In this case, I have studied how signs and other artifacts leave traces of anti-programs against the COVID-19 pandemic. Observations, in physical stores and online, are presented as the main empirical material used to identify traces of five anti-programs.
Findings
The five types of anti-programs identified were, namely (1) fighting the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic through prompts, (2) verbalizing responsibility, (3) creating a feeling of collectivity, (4) aspiring to heroism and (5) mobilizing support for continued business. The anti-programs were organized via a connection between human and nonhuman actors.
Originality/value
The study illustrates the usefulness of Latour's terminology in exploring contemporary sequences of events by means of using programs of action and anti-programs to study the case of retailers' responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. The study echoes ANT and Latour's ideas about including nonhuman actors in social studies. Moreover, the study demonstrates how these concepts can be productively introduced into studies of complex phenomena, by discussing the choice of viewpoint, how actors can be conjoined into one entity, the inclusion of nonobservable actors and the co-existence of an actor in both the program of action and the anti-programs.
... Schwartz and Howard (1981) outlined that motivations (morally and/ or socially induced) can stimulate altruistic behavior, as a type of true sharing without (direct) compensation. With our research we want to highlight socializers (or mediators as Latour [2000] would say) for prosocial behavior and altruism in the domain of mobility. Another empirical study by Hamari et al. (2016) shows strong effects of attitude, enjoyment and sustainability on individual behavioral intentions to participate in collaborative activities such as sharing. ...
Sharing is an intensely discussed social mechanism with respect to resource scarcity. Motivations for sharing behavior (economical, altruistic etc.) can be observed in various domains of human life. In case of transportation sharable resources include both infrastructures such as roads, tracks, airports etc. as well as vehicles. Furthermore, sharing in transportation is of high importance as e.g. an increase in persons per vehicle means a reduction in air pollution. Thus, issues of sharing the transportation are in the center of actual political debates on life quality
and climate change. Utility-based microeconomic approaches are the dominant paradigm to explain travel behavior. These approaches focus on external costs and manifest effects such as travel costs, travel times, numbers of headways etc. In addition, we apply socio-psychological theories to test e.g. issues of usability, explain how specific social groups notice specific transport supplies cognitively and design advertising campaigns to foster their use. Our research aims at contributing to sociology (on different analytical levels) and transportation research by challenging existing observable microfoundations of sharing and applying them to sociological concepts. To reach this aim, we introduce the relevance of sharing behavior in passenger transportation, introduce and define theoretical sharing patterns and motives for sharing behavior on the level of acting subjects and provide transportation-related examples. Furthermore, we have a look at the mesoscopic level of prosocial behavior in groups and societies, and finally present first hypothesis for empirical tests.
... Some researchers consider such statements as category errors that erratically classify machines as legitimate trustees and thereby conflate trust with reliability [107,109], whereas others argue that despite being conceptually confused, such statements may be meaningful [104]. Drawing on work by Latour [110] and Hartmann [111], it can be argued that even a simple tool "can be considered an agent in complex social relationships" [104] and thus can be trusted as it appears as a quasi-other. Following a phenomenological-social approach, Coeckelbergh characterises such trusting relationships as "virtual" or "quasitrust" [106], which can be reasonably placed in such robots with whom a social relation can be established. ...
The relevance of trust on the road to successful human-robot interaction is widely acknowledged. Thereby, trust is commonly understood as a monolithic concept characterising dyadic relations between a human and a robot. However, this conceptualisation seems oversimplified and neglects the specific interaction context. In a multidisciplinary approach, this conceptual analysis synthesizes sociological notions of trust and distrust, psychological trust models, and ideas of philosophers of technology in order to pave the way for a multidimensional, relational and context-sensitive conceptualisation of human-robot trust and distrust. In this vein, trust is characterised functionally as a mechanism to cope with environmental complexity when dealing with ambiguously perceived hybrid robots such as collaborative robots, which enable human-robot interactions without physical separation in the workplace context. Common definitions of trust in the HRI context emphasise that trust is based on concrete expectations regarding individual goals. Therefore, I propose a three-dimensional notion of trust that binds trust to a reference object and accounts for various coexisting goals at the workplace. Furthermore, the assumption that robots represent trustees in a narrower sense is challenged by unfolding influential relational networks of trust within the organisational context. In terms of practical implications, trust is distinguished from acceptance and actual technology usage, which may be promoted by trust, but are strongly influenced by contextual moderating factors. In addition, theoretical arguments for considering distrust not only as the opposite of trust, but as an alternative and coexisting complexity reduction mechanism are outlined. Finally, the article presents key conclusions and future research avenues.
... Köhler, Geels, Kern, Onsongo, & Wieczorek, 2017). This lack of reflexivity regarding the sensory dimension of infrastructural projects and sustainability transitions is somewhat surprising as the tangible materiality of infrastructures and sociotechnical systems has always been an issue (Bijker, Hughes, & Pinch, 1987;Latour, 2000), while aesthetic questions have always played a key role in modern critique, from Walter Benjamin to Theodor W. Adorno. In order to explore this untapped potential for reflexivity, I therefore propose to focus on situated practices of sensory governance and to empirically study how they facilitate or undermine societal engagement with infrastructural projects and sociotechnical transitions towards sustainability. ...
... They do so because they transcend the ontological status of the object, thus calling into question the anthropocentric ontology from which AI emerged. In all but the most esoteric contexts (e.g., Callon, 1984;Latour, 2000;Seberger, 2021), objects do not act precisely because they are objects, and yet objects imbued with AI functionality do act. AI, thus, reveals alternative ontologies or alternative ways of conceptualizing and organizing the stuff that comprises the world. ...
... was to divide the unity and solidarity of the G77 by focusing on the least developed countries and offering them aid payments, intended as an instrument of control (Patel and McMichael, 2004;Hickel, 2017b (Strum and Latour, 1987). The insight that subjective aspects can materialize themselves in technological artifacts (cf. Winner, 1980, p. 122f.;Latour, 2000) prompted Latour to attribute agency not just to subjects, but to objects as well. Thus, he argues that the subject-object dichotomy must be abandoned, as it implies active subjects and passive objects. Instead of subjects and objects, we should refer to human and non-human actors (Latour, 1994, p. 488). ...
In public discourse, solutions towards rising global inequality and ecological degradation often refer to the increased application of technology. Such approach is indicative of a fetishization of technology that fails to adequately conceptualize the global flows of land-and labor-resources that continually (re)produce technology. By comparing three distinct ontologies of technology, I argue that the dominant conception of technology is largely anchored in the non-relational ontology of neoclassical economics. By drawing from both actor-network-theory and historical materialism, I develop an alternative ontology of technology that aims to expose the societal structures and natural constrains on which technology is based. I argue that technology must be conceptualized as a "sense-making machine". Because of its fetishization, technology has a decisive mediating role between the observer of reality and reality itself. Those that control the technological artifacts can make use of the fetishized conception of technology and concretize certain aspects of reality-such as the monetary "value creation" in industrial countries-and obscure other aspects-such as the land and labor appropriation from the developing world. Not only is technology sense-making in such confining way. It can also guide the analysis of societal and natural processes: By using technology not as an end point, but a starting point of explanations I show that one can overcome the fetishization of technology, make visible the real foundations of technological value-creation and evaluate the gains and losses from technology more fairly.
... Köhler, Geels, Kern, Onsongo, & Wieczorek, 2017). This lack of reflexivity regarding the sensory dimension of infrastructural projects and sustainability transitions is somewhat surprising as the tangible materiality of infrastructures and sociotechnical systems has always been an issue (Bijker, Hughes, & Pinch, 1987;Latour, 2000), while aesthetic questions have always played a key role in modern critique, from Walter Benjamin to Theodor W. Adorno. In order to explore this untapped potential for reflexivity, I therefore propose to focus on situated practices of sensory governance and to empirically study how they facilitate or undermine societal engagement with infrastructural projects and sociotechnical transitions towards sustainability. ...
Are aesthetics and politics really two different things? The book takes a new look at how they intertwine, by turning from theory to practice. Case studies trace how sensory experiences are created and how collective interests are shaped. They investigate how aesthetics and politics are entangled, both in building and disrupting collective orders, in governance and innovation. This ranges from populist rallies and artistic activism over alternative lifestyles and consumer culture to corporate PR and governmental policies. Authors are academics and artists. The result is a new mapping of the intermingling and co-constitution of aesthetics and politics in engagements with collective orders.
... Köhler, Geels, Kern, Onsongo, & Wieczorek, 2017). This lack of reflexivity regarding the sensory dimension of infrastructural projects and sustainability transitions is somewhat surprising as the tangible materiality of infrastructures and sociotechnical systems has always been an issue (Bijker, Hughes, & Pinch, 1987;Latour, 2000), while aesthetic questions have always played a key role in modern critique, from Walter Benjamin to Theodor W. Adorno. In order to explore this untapped potential for reflexivity, I therefore propose to focus on situated practices of sensory governance and to empirically study how they facilitate or undermine societal engagement with infrastructural projects and sociotechnical transitions towards sustainability. ...
Are aesthetics and politics really two different things? The book takes a new look at how they intertwine, by turning from theory to practice. Case studies trace how sensory experiences are created and how collective interests are shaped. They investigate how aesthetics and politics are entangled, both in building and disrupting collective orders, in governance and innovation. This ranges from populist rallies and artistic activism over alternative lifestyles and consumer culture to corporate PR and governmental policies. Authors are academics and artists. The result is a new mapping of the intermingling and co-constitution of aesthetics and politics in engagements with collective orders.
... With our research we want to highlight socializers (or mediators as (Latour 2000) would say) for altruism in the domain of mobility. Another empirical study by Hamari et al. (2016) shows strong effects of attitude, enjoyment and sustainability on individual behavioral intentions to participate in collaboration. ...
... An illustrative example of how objects interact with humans, how they are intertwined, and the inscription of instructions in material form is provided in the essay 'The Berlin Key or How to Do Words with Things' (Latour, 1991). A key the key with two bits entails and how the key and the keyhole make a social relation as regarding discipline: 'From being a simple tool, the steel key assumes all the dignity of a mediator, a social actor, an agent, an active being' (Latour, 1991, p. 19 (Latour, 1991, p. 19). ...
Population ageing and demographic change pose a challenge to the delivery of healthcare services. In light of this development, new care models and the use of digital tools are reshuffling traditional healthcare settings. This is particularly apparent in the trend of moving healthcare activities out of hospitals, and technology plays a central role. The shift of healthcare services into homes opens up a set of sociotechnical challenges worth our attention.
This thesis investigates the shift of healthcare services into the user’s home by means of technology. Specifically, the thesis answers two research questions: (i) How are systems that support remote care shaped for their users across different contexts? and (ii) How is care at a distance realised, and what role does technology play in this?
Theoretically, the thesis is situated at the intersection of information systems (IS) and computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW). Moreover, the thesis’ theoretical framework includes theories and concepts from neighbouring fields such as participatory design (PD) and science and technology studies (STS).
Through a four-year embedded multiple-case study, the thesis provides a detailed account of what is entailed in moving healthcare services into homes. The two cases have been selected to provide a complementary picture of the phenomenon. Case 1 focuses on welfare technology (WT), a service where technology supplements healthcare services at home. Case 2 on mental health home treatment (HT) follows how severe mental health crises are treated at home by home treatment teams supported with technology. In addition to moving healthcare services into homes, the two cases have in common a level of maturity. Both cases have moved away from the piloting phase and are on the brink of becoming an established healthcare service. Hence, they provide exceptional insights.
Based on detailed accounts of the two cases, this thesis contributes to a better understanding of what is entailed in moving healthcare services into homes. The ethnographic description of work in HT and the conceptualisation of proximity and distance contribute to the growing body of literature on home care in CSCW. Furthermore, platforms play a central role in disseminating digital healthcare services. The thesis contributes to the theoretical body of platforms in IS by describing the tailoring and shaping of a platform in a fluid environment. Moreover, this thesis offers a methodological contribution by discussing a strategy to scale user participation as understood in the field of PD. Together, these contributions provide a coherent image and advocate a deeper understanding of a healthcare area in motion.
... Was ein Objekt ist, wurde zu irgendeinem Zeitpunkt in das Objekt eingeschrieben. Es trägt Normen in sich, es macht gewisse Reaktionen der menschlichen Akteure relevant oder erforderlich und andere unmöglich (Latour, 2000). Kurz, Objekte nehmen aktiv an einer gegebenen Situation teil, strukturieren Handlungen und teilen sie: »Human interaction is most often localized, framed, held in check. ...
Viele pädagogische und andere Arbeitsfelder definieren sich über »Helfen« als zentralen Handlungsmodus. Aber trotz breiter sozial- und erziehungswissenschaftlicher Diskussion bleibt das Helfen als Praxis theoretisch unterbestimmt. Der interdisziplinäre Band versammelt Beiträge zu organisierten Formen der Hilfegewährung, die für den Wohlfahrtsstaat kennzeichnend sind. Qualitative empirische Studien zeichnen die Praktiken des institutionalisierten Helfens und die Verschränkungen mit ihren organisationalen Strukturen nach. Dieser Blick eröffnet Perspektiven auf die Methodizität des Helfens als widersprüchliches Phänomen: trotz aller Vorgaben und Konzepte beruht es im Kern auf konkreten Begegnungen.
... As for the more far-reaching and compelling answer, however, we have only to consider that our technical and social environments are saturated by natural and device languagestraffic lights and road signs, the whistles and bells of vehicles and dispensing machines, announcements in various languages, and the many scripts which govern the use even of ordinary technology (Latour, 2000). In light of all this, the human being is engulfed by a bewildering cacophony of letters and sounds, only some of which rooted in the natural languages. ...
By way of introduction, the many relations are considered between technologies and languages in a multilingual world. The contemporary biotechnosphere is also a sphere where natural and technical languages intermingle. In particular, three questions will be considered, all three pertaining to the relation between the technological and the multilingual condition of modern life: To what extent does technology foster and create the multilingual condition? What do the competencies acquired for navigating under the multilingual condition tell us more generally about linguistic competence as a technical skill? How can technologies help us navigate and orient ourselves in a multilingual world? If languages are themselves fixtures of the world that afford orientation in our socio-technical environment and co-ordination among people, we will no longer absolutize our native language as a standard for proper understanding. We multilingually learn to technically orient ourselves and control our social and material world.
В качестве введения рассматриваются многие отношения между технологиями и языками в мультилингвальном мире. Современная биотехносфера также является сферой смешения естественных и технических языков. В частности, будут рассмотрены три вопроса, все три из них относятся к соотношению между технологическими и многоязычными условиями современной жизни: в какой степени технология способствует и создает мультилингвальные условия? Что приобретенные для навигации в условиях мультилингвизма навыки говорят нам в более общем плане о языковой компетенции как техническом навыке? Как технологии могут помочь нам ориентироваться и управлять мультилингвальным миром? Если языки сами по себе являются средствами, которые обеспечивают ориентацию в нашей социотехнической среде и координацию между людьми, мы больше не будем абсолютизировать естественные языки как стандарт для правильного понимания. Мы многоязычно учимся технически ориентироваться и контролировать наш социальный и материальный мир.
... Die englische Version des Textes(Latour 1991) gibt es, neben vielen anderen Texten von Latour, auf dessen Homepage zum Download: http://www.bruno-latour.fr (Zugriff am 13.2.2021). ...
Der Band gibt eine kompakte Übersicht zu zentralen Theorien (in) der Kommunikationswissenschaft. Insgesamt werden 28 Schlüsselwerke aus der Mikro-, Meso und Makro-Ebene vorgestellt. Ziel ist es, Studierende und Dozierende in den Stand zu versetzen, ein wesentliches Werk in dessen Kontext zu verstehen und in die jeweilige Fachdiskussion einzuordnen. Darüber hinaus wird in diesem Band die Frage diskutiert, welches analytische und empirische Potenzial von den „Klassikern“ in Zeiten digitaler Kommunikation ausgeht.
... Quite a few years ago, Bruno Latour wrote an essay entitled 'The Berlin Key' [100]. Paraphrasing Austin, but only to critically overturn his thought on performatives, he subtitled the essay: 'How to Make Words with Things.' Taking as a starting point the cumbersome use of the Berlin key, which requires the active collaboration of a 17 [167]. ...
In this essay both the facts/values and facticity/normativity divides are considered from the perspective of global semiotics and with specific regard to the relationships between legal meaning and spatial scope of law’s experience. Through an examination of the inner and genetic projective significance of categorization, I will analyze the semantic dynamics of the descriptive parts comprising legal sentences in order to show the intermingling of factual and axiological/teleological categorizations in the unfolding of legal experience. Subsequently, I will emphasize the translational and enactive cognitive disposition underlying the construction of the second premise of the so-called judiciary syllogism and thereby the untenability of the idea that ‘law makes its facts.’ Hence, I will try to bring to the fore the cultural pre-assumptions encapsulated in the positivistic and therefore also formalistic or analytical approaches to legal experience and the loss of their inner consistency when legal experience confronts the phases and major changes of global semiotics. Finally, I will strive to relativize the opposition between the positivist and non-positivistic theories of law in view of an understanding of legal experience focused not only, or at least not primarily, on what ‘law is’ but also on ‘how’ it unwinds through, and in spite of, environmental and semantic transformations.
... Was ein Objekt ist, wurde zu irgendeinem Zeitpunkt in das Objekt eingeschrieben. Es trägt Normen in sich, es macht gewisse Reaktionen der menschlichen Akteure relevant oder erforderlich und andere unmöglich (Latour, 2000). Kurz, Objekte nehmen aktiv an einer gegebenen Situation teil, strukturieren Handlungen und teilen sie: »Human interaction is most often localized, framed, held in check. ...
Viele pädagogische und andere Arbeitsfelder definieren sich über »Helfen« als zentralen Handlungsmodus. Aber trotz breiter sozial- und erziehungswissenschaftlicher Diskussion bleibt das Helfen als Praxis theoretisch unterbestimmt. Der interdisziplinäre Band versammelt Beiträge zu organisierten Formen der Hilfegewährung, die für den Wohlfahrtsstaat kennzeichnend sind. Qualitative empirische Studien zeichnen die Praktiken des institutionalisierten Helfens und die Verschränkungen mit ihren organisationalen Strukturen nach. Dieser Blick eröffnet Perspektiven auf die Methodizität des Helfens als widersprüchliches Phänomen: trotz aller Vorgaben und Konzepte beruht es im Kern auf konkreten Begegnungen.
... La comunicazione, per riprendere l'argomento di John Durham Peters (2005Peters ( [1999, p. 61), non è solo «dialogo» intersoggettivo, ma è anche «disseminazione» attraverso oggetti, reti, segnali che prescindono dall'intenzionalità dei parlanti. Le capacità e le agency comunicative dei non umani sono del resto al centro delle prospettive materialiste che animano il più recente dibattito accademico (Latour, 2000;Law, 2009;Cooren, 2010), le quali invitano ad abbandonare ontologie prestabilite e fisse per adottare ontologie relazionali e performative, focalizzate sui processi di costruzione, co-costruzione ed emergenza (Czarniawska, 2003;Hansen, 2006;Galloway, 2014). Da questo punto di vista, la domanda sulla voce artificiale si allontana necessariamente dal terreno della definizione, per interrogare il che cosa essa fa comunicando, quali relazioni e quali processi intrattiene col corpo, con gli immaginari, con i saperi, con le pratiche del quotidiano e le pratiche di laboratorio, con le organizzazioni sociali ed economiche; e quali relazioni intrattiene con l'idea stessa di voce nella sua declinazione tanto culturale quanto scientifica, in che modo è da quella definita e in che modo contribuisce a determinarla. ...
La voce artificiale si confronta con la crescente diffusione della tecnologia parlante, dagli assistenti vocali come Siri e Alexa, alla sintesi vocale per persone con disabilità fino alla clonazione vocale e al deepfake.
La voce artificiale non è solo una tecnologia, ma una pratica culturale: essa riguarda il modo di concepire la comunicazione, il ruolo delle macchine e l’espressività vocale stessa, sempre più ibridata con processi informatici ed elettro-acustici che ridefiniscono i rapporti tra voce, corpo e soggettività.
La voce artificiale indaga in parallelo l’impatto della tecnologia vocale sull’immaginario dell’Intelligenza Artificiale, con le narrazioni che ne alimentano il mito, e le pratiche di programmazione messe in campo per realizzare quelle tecnologie, le quali promuovono saperi ed epistemologie che si traducono in strutture sociali e modelli organizzativi, fino a interessare la condizione antropologica della contemporaneità.
Perché il computer parlante è la materializzazione di significati sociali e modi di pensare la voce che si esprimono tanto a livello sonoro quanto a livello delle operazioni di misurazione, modellizzazione e apprendimento automatico che ingegnerizzano la voce.
Perché indagare media-archeologicamente la voce significa spingersi oltre l’antropomorfismo della macchina parlante e rivolgersi all’ecosistema socio-materiale e tecno-culturale nel quale ogni voce, umana o non umana che sia, diventa ascoltabile.
Perché il suono dà accesso a una conoscenza del mondo in grado di cogliere le mediazioni, le relazioni, le tracce e gli affetti.
Se ne consiglia la lettura a chi abbia voglia di affrontare un viaggio articolato tra artefatti, saperi, storie, desideri, immaginari antichi e moderni, ma anche interessi, pratiche di laboratorio e pratiche artistiche che insieme compongono la voce artificiale come fenomeno molteplice e storicamente determinato.
Se ne sconsiglia la lettura a chi sia soddisfatto dalle narrazioni deterministiche e soluzioniste che vedono l’Intelligenza Artificiale come forza misteriosa e magica o come semplice sinonimo di progresso.
... 6. Augé (1996, 178) characterizes "spaces of circulation, communication and consumption" such as airports, motorways and supermarkets as archetypal of the non-place, and the traveler and shopper as archetypal of individuals who are able to experience a unique, cathartic similitude in spaces "where solitudes coexist." 7. Scholars have tapped into this variation as a way to specifically illuminate active agency, taking both enabling and constraining forms, that emanates out of human actants' interactions with non-human, "technical" actants, such as one's laptop or Twitter feed. For an early, lucid example illustrative of the utility of considering such actants, see Latour (2000). ...
Over the past year, COVID-19 and the restrictions imposed in its wake have meant that a range of research methodologies involving social contact could no longer be pursued. Whilst this time has been challenging, this article aims to showcase how it nonetheless presents opportunities for methodological innovation that can be carried forward into the future. Drawing upon an autoethnographic dissertation that sought to conceptualize the researcher’s lived experience in Scotland’s lockdown as an assemblage that was situated within, and intersected with, the wider “lockdown cultural assemblage,” it proceeds chronologically from how the research began to inductively drawn findings on shifts to lived experience produced by the lockdown across five interrelated dimensions to lived experience: embodiment, spatiality, temporality, a changing vocabulary of sociality, and narratological environment and broader context. In recounting this journey, it demonstrates how assemblage theory can both benefit from, as well as transform, autoethnography as its primary methodological strategy.
... The first two of the above: based on Latour, technology analysis and purpose analysis can be described as non-black boxing technology and identifying the scripts built into technology (Akrich, 1992;Latour, 1994Latour, , 2000. Usage studies focus on the empirical analysis of the use of technology, or again following Akrich, how technologies are de-scribed in practice, i.e. how technology is actually used in practice. ...
In this article, I wish to unfold the question: "what is technology actually and what characterizes our relation to technology?” and relate it to the technology understanding course, since how we think about and perceive technology, is arguably consequential for how we practice and conduct our lives and societies and for what we consider possibilities, problems, solutions and necessary actions. What I will argue is that we need to challenge a preferred and inherently humanistic and anthropocentric understanding of technology that sees technology as ideally a designed object subject to human control. This is an understanding that has dominated throughout enlightenment and modernity. However, my argument in this text is that it is both inadequate and problematic because it keeps us in a frame of thinking that perpetually reproduces the idea of technological solutions to problems.
... In Bruno Latour's apt phrasing, technologies are "full of people": they concretize human expertise and function to advance human goals. 26 Just the same, technologies are full of time. Karl Marx described one aspect of this when he argued that the value of the commodity consists in "congealed labor-time." ...
... Among ANT's most productive contributions we might count its demonstrations of the role of technology in distinctly human, 'remote' or indirect forms of social positioning, persuasion and power exertion -significant in all societies but increasingly with larger scales of organization -(e.g. Callon & Latour 1981;Latour 2000;Strum & Latour 1987), 7 its studies of how constellations of technology, power and exchange are (re)negotiated, and how they reach (once again) some form of 'closure' (e.g. Latour 1987;Law & Callon 1992) and its consideration of how sociotechnical networks can come to exhibit degrees of irreversibility (Callon 1991). ...
This chapter aims to show how the relationship between Latour's investigation on meaning and the research perspective on signification developed within the framework of structural semiotics is anything but episodic, marginal or outdated. With the aim of highlighting the reasons behind an uninterrupted dialogue, even if often denied or marginalised in the field of social sciences, this chapter considers the main semiotic concepts at the basis of Latour’s work, highlighting the main affinities and discontinuities that emerge at a theoretical and methodological level, with particular reference to actor-network theory. It is pointed out that the metaphor of semiotics as a toolbox for actor-network theory is overly reductive and does not sufficiently account for the presence of a common non-anthropomorphic theory of agency and an anti-dualist epistemological principle that recognizes the primacy of the relationship over the elements involved in a social phenomenon. To this end, a comparison is made between the notions of actor, actant, enunciation, narrative program originally elaborated within the framework of semiotic theory and their novel reinterpretation introduced by Latour to examine the paradoxes of modernity.
Diving technology is not a set of tools for use, nor a mere collection of objects. Instead, it constitutes an integral part of the diving experience, serving as the foundational framework for comprehending the history of diving itself. Within this context, technology assumes a pivotal role in shaping diving traditions imbued with social purposes and values, and its preservation is often considered essential in subsequent times. Thus, technology, and the practices of pioneers and, more importantly, everyday actors, become the fundamental elements of an invented tradition influenced by local aquatic customs. The objective of this chapter is to explore the historical context in which technology and underwater practices have evolved in Greece, with a specific focus on the local diving tradition of sponge diving in Kalymnos and the broader Dodecanese region.
Recent developments in AI make the question of machine agency a pressing matter. Contrary to the idea that agency is the inherent quality of a system we argue that agency should be seen as a social status acquired in social practices. From this perspective, we develop criteria for the theoretical demarcation of agents and non-agents to distinguish entities based on the attributed abilities and their relative power in social networks. We derive a matrix of different types of AI agents and use the theory to interpret the findings of empirical studies on human-machine communication.
The article explores meaning-making by investigating the subject-object relation and human-machine intra-action within the context of archive and archiving practices. It discusses changing relations between humans, machines, and objects in changing technological environments. Entering the digital archive’s cosmos, the subject-object relation transfers the focus on human-machine intra-action. The article examines the thingness of digital objects and the role of search engines in generating data collections as prerequisites for the intelligibility of the entangled parts. In digital flowness, search engines provoke a stasis in the constant movement of information, creating ephemeral collections. Thus, meaning emerges as a temporal pause within the ongoing continuum. The article argues that in the processual continuum of movement-stasis, meaning is a process – always a momentum, always stillborn, thus, intelligible to both the human and the machine. Conceiving meaning as a process within the condition of digital flowness signifies the transcendence of content in favor of processual entanglements between the human and the machine.
The current outsourcing of maintenance and the use of technological devices to automatically care for plants in buildings change the spatial experience between human office occupants and plants. This caretaker system distances people from plants, inclining us to regard them more as decorative objects. The relationship between humans and plants in a building is often unidirectional, with plants providing humans multiple benefits such as improved health and well-being, and increased worker productivity. In our human-plant interaction study, we developed a layer of care infrastructure within an office building that gives agency to people as a collective to interact with and take care of other non-human beings; that is, plants. In re-imagining mediated human-building interaction, we employed technology as an ambient mediator where people, plants and technology comprised the plant care system in a typical office building. A year-long design intervention was introduced within a typical office floor using artifacts (pots, shelves, and digital system) which we fabricated for the plants. From the results of an 8 week participation experiment together with data from qualitative interviews of 6 study participants, we identified five themes: Technology, Object/Thing, Infrastructuring, Commoning, and Care. Our analysis of these themes informs a care infrastructuring approach where both humans and plants become interdependent office co-inhabitants. By entangling with technology, care, and others, we present an infrastructuring layer to mediate human-building interactions with plants.
In Courtly Mediators, Leah R. Clark investigates the exchange of a range of materials and objects, including metalware, ceramic drug jars, Chinese porcelain, and aromatics, across the early modern Italian, Mamluk, and Ottoman courts. She provides a new narrative that places Aragonese Naples at the center of an international courtly culture, where cosmopolitanism and the transcultural flourished, and in which artists, ambassadors, and luxury goods actively participated. By articulating how and why transcultural objects were exchanged, displayed, copied, and framed, she provides a new methodological framework that transforms our understanding of the Italian Renaissance court. Clark's volume provides a multi-sensorial, innovative reading of Italian Renaissance art. It demonstrates that the early modern culture of collecting was more than a humanistic enterprise associated with the European roots of the Renaissance. Rather, it was sustained by interactions with global material cultures from the Islamic world and beyond.
Human-Machine Communication and fields like journalism studies have been discussing new technological developments in journalism, especially automation technologies like automated writing software. However, existing literature has terminological problems: Terms are not distinctly defined and delimited, different aspects can be referred to with the same term, while different, often misleading, terms exist for the same aspect. As a result, it is often unclear which concept is being referred to. To gain a better understanding and modeling of automation in journalism as well as a theoretical foundation, this paper first describes current problems with terms used in scientific literature and argues that existing automation taxonomies are not fully transferrable to journalism, making a new theoretical basis necessary. Subsequently, Rammert and Schulz-Schaeffer’s concept of distributed and gradualised action is described and proposed as such a theoretical basis for the unification of terminology and conceptual foundations, providing the opportunity to empirically and normatively describe automation as well as delivering necessary theoretical underpinnings. Lastly, the concept is applied to automation in journalism, resulting in a proposed automation concept, suggestions for terminology, and further implications for Human-Machine Communication theory.
Welche Rolle spielen die Dinge in einer Theorie des Sozialen? Dieser Frage hat der französische Philosoph und Soziologe Bruno Latour einen Gutteil seines bis heute äußerst produktiven Forscherlebens gewidmet. Der Essay „Der Berliner Schlüssel“, auf Deutsch erstmals erschienen im Jahr 1994, schlägt einen Handlungsbegriff vor, der sich radikal von den einschlägigen mikrosoziologischen Konzepten unterscheidet: Am Beispiel des Berliner Durchsteckschlüssels zeigt Latour, wie technische Artefakte ihren Benutzern bestimmte Handlungsprogramme aufzwängen. Dabei entfaltet er anhand präziser Beschreibungen die Kernthese der Akteur-Netzwerk-Theorie (ANT): Soziales Handeln geht nicht von Menschen aus. Stattdessen ‚wirkt‘ im Falle des Berliner Schlüssels ein komplexes Geflecht aus Objekten und Menschen, das sich weit über Zeit und Raum erstreckt: ein Akteur-Netzwerk. Anhand des ausgewählten Essays werden im Folgenden die zentralen Elemente der ANT vorgestellt und kontextualisiert. Auch wenn die Akteur-Netzwerk-Theorie keine Medientheorie im engeren Sinne ist, soll abschließend ihr Potenzial für die Analyse digitaler Infrastrukturen gezeigt werden.
Este artigo explora a relação entre espaço doméstico, tecnologias e as políticas higienistas na cidade de São Paulo, entre o final do século XIX e as primeiras décadas do século XX. Com base no levantamento dos pedidos para novas construções habitacionais do período, observa-se a rápida transformação da moradia segundo preceitos de salubridade e limpeza, com destaque para a constituição de um novo ambiente no programa residencial: o banheiro. Partindo dessa constatação, o artigo é dividido em duas partes: na primeira, discutese como as políticas sanitaristas tornam obrigatória a presença de um cômodo sanitário nas moradias paulistanas por meio da implantação dos serviços de fornecimento de água e esgoto para domicílios, apoiada pela legislação e fiscalização; na segunda parte, o trabalho examina a apropriação social desse novo espaço, assim como de seus equipamentos, revelando que a
consolidação do banheiro deve ser compreendida também à luz das mudanças das práticas corporais ligadas às ideias de higiene, limpeza e conforto em discussão na época.
In the last three decades Architectural Prototyping (AP) has been reinstated as a useful teaching tool by a growing number of architecture higher education institutions. These institutions are using AP within two main frameworks: designbuild courses and Digital Fabrication Laboratories (DFL). These frameworks are characterized by intensive technological and hybrid digital-physical environments, and they promote an alternative teaching and learning approach to mainstream architectural education. However, the ways in which learning is constructed within these frameworks is yet to be fully understood. Therefore, this research aims to explore how AP affects the ways in which architectural knowledge is being constructed in contemporary architectural educational settings. Our multidisciplinary research is positioned at the intersection of three research areas: architectural education, craft practice, and Human-Computer-Interaction (HCI). It adopts the ‘enactivism’ epistemology and investigates the cognitive processes behind the craft of architectural prototyping within the context of entangled social-material and digital learning environments.
Full access at: https://www.tandfonline.com/share/NC3WCRPFSKCXAF6MAIPT?target=10.1080/14606925.2022.2053421
An inbuilt theoretical deficiency of any cybernetic or phenomenological accounts of human-smartphone interaction is that their inherited frameworks suffer from lopsided explanatory proficiencies. Neither can explicate one ‘side’ of the interaction without inappropriately foisting those logics onto its dyadic counterpart. In this paper, both Michael Polanyi’s bio-philosophy and a Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophy of brain seek to remedy this conceptual deficit by positing a conceptual toolkit that incorporates pertinent cybernetic and phenomenological revelations while abjuring their dogmatizing propensities. This conjoined reading of Polanyi with Deleuze and Guattari asserts that temporary, bounded structures of interference between mind and machine – rooted in asymmetry, inertia, and labile planes of cognition – are the grounding dimension of human-smartphone interaction, which is itself taken as emblematic of our wider relations to smart technologies.
As digital convergence marks the transition from print to screen culture, translation plays an increasingly important role of in the production and dissemination of the news. The translation of information in the news media is a pervasive set of practices that affects the daily consumption of the news and a topic of relevance to scholars in several areas of the humanities and the social sciences. This book provides a wide-ranging and accessible introduction to research in news media translation practices, products and processes, illustrating and discussing historical, theoretical and descriptive perspectives. Inter- and multi-disciplinary research spans fields such as Translation Studies, Linguistics, Journalism and Media Studies, and includes approaches from Critical Discourse Analysis and narrative theory to Systemic Functional Linguistics and Corpus Linguistics. The book also offers first-hand analyses of news texts in English and Italian, approaching news translation from an ethnomethodological perspective.
In the past, our ideas of psychiatric hospitals and their history have been shaped by objects like straitjackets, cribs, and binding belts. These powerful objects were often used as a synonym for psychiatry and the way psychiatric patients were treated, yet very little is known about the agency of these objects and their appropriation by staff and patients. By focusing on material cultures, this book offers a new perspective on the history of psychiatry: it enables a narrative in which practicing psychiatry is part of a complex entanglement in which power is constantly negotiated. Scholars from different academic disciplines show how this material-based approach opens up new perspectives on the agency and imagination of men and women inside psychiatry.
The construction of a paved road in Santa Cruz la Laguna, Guatemala has been widely discussed across the municipality in recent years. This article discusses how contending narratives coexisted yet changed as the construction of the road progressed. While the road‐building project became the embodiment of political disaffection and societal problems during the construction phase as it transformed the landscape, the materiality of the completed road generated hope for prosperity linked to its economic advantages. The study of this road‐landscape nexus ethnographically explores the transformation of an infrastructure project as it moves from embodying possibility to reality.
In the past, our ideas of psychiatric hospitals and their history have been shaped by objects like straitjackets, cribs, and binding belts. These powerful objects were often used as a synonym for psychiatry and the way psychiatric patients were treated, yet very little is known about the agency of these objects and their appropriation by staff and patients. By focusing on material cultures, this book offers a new perspective on the history of psychiatry: it enables a narrative in which practicing psychiatry is part of a complex entanglement in which power is constantly negotiated. Scholars from different academic disciplines show how this material-based approach opens up new perspectives on the agency and imagination of men and women inside psychiatry.
À la croisée entre archéologie et anthropologie se trouve ce que l’on pourrait appeler un « territoire méthodologique partagé » où se rencontrent également d’autres disciplines, telles que l’histoire de l’art ou la muséologie. Je veux parler ici de la « culture matérielle », ou plus simplement des objets, dont le caractère de « point de rencontre » mérite que l’on s’y arrête un instant, en raison de leur nature profondément tangible. Sans trop forcer les contrastes, je commencerai par suggérer que ces disciplines procèdent d’un principe similaire sous-jacent postulant une distinction a priori entre d’un côté, les objets et, de l’autre, quelque chose que l’on appellerait le « contexte ».
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