10 Where Are the Missing Masses? The Sociology of a Few Mundane Artifacts

One of the most popular and powerful ways of resolving the technological determinism/ social constructivism dichotomy in technology studies is the actor-network approach. Those advocating the actor-network approach agree with the social constructivist claim that socio- technical systems are developed through negotiations between people, institutions, and organizations. But they make the additional interesting argument that artifacts are part of these negotiations as well. This is not to say that machines think like people and decide how they will act, but their behavior or nature often has a comparable role. Actor-network theorists argue that the material world pushes back on people because of its physical structure or natural behavior. People are free to interpret the precise meaning of an artifact, but they can't simply tell an automobile engine to get two hundred miles per gallon. The laws of nature and the capacities of a particular design limit the ways in which artifacts can be integrated into a sociotechnical system. In this selection, one of the foremost contributors to the actor-network approach, Bruno Latour, explores how artifacts can be deliberately designed to both replace human action and constrain and shape the actions of humans. His study demonstrates how people can "act at a distance" through the technologies they create and implement and how, from a user's perspective, a technology can appear to determine or compel certain actions. He argues that even technologies so commonplace that we don't think about them can shape the decisions we make, the effects our actions have, and the way we move through the world. Technologies play such an important role in mediating human relationships, Latour contends, that we cannot understand how societies work without comprehending how technologies shape our everyday lives. Latour's study of the relationship between producers, machines, and users demonstrates how certain values and political goals can be promoted and achieved through the construction and employment of technologies.