Indeed, with the development of an STS approach known as actornetwork theory, the agency of objects has taken center stage.41 What does this mean? Although I have been emphasizing the key role of users in assigning meaning to objects, some formulations of this tend towards social determinism, that is, a view of technologies as infinitely flexible and tractable. Actor-network’s conception of nonhuman objects as actors (“actants”) or agents who exercise power serves as a corrective to this view. It helps us understand how the materiality and obduracy of artifacts create boundaries to the possibilities for interpretation and usage.
Consider for a moment the design phase of technological systems. In order to develop functional instruments or devices, engineers and designers anticipate the interests, skills, motives, and behavior of future users. Subsequently, these representations or configurations of users become built into or materialized in the form of the new product. In this sense, objects contain a “script” that stipulates how they can facilitate or constrain human activities, as well as relationships between people and things. This script delegates specific competencies, actions, and responsibilities both to users and artifacts. Bruno Latour’s much-cited examples of automatic doors and road bumps illustrate how technical objects can impose programs of action on users, defining actors, the space in which they move, and the ways in which they behave and interact. Fittingly called sleeping policemen, road bumps are delegated the job of reducing motorists’ speed where the rule of law does not sufice. In this way, it can be said that the material world itself exercises a kind of agency. Ironically, in this case, we see technology literally acting to achieve deceleration.
This is not to imply that the way artifacts evolve and are used is predetermined or irreversible. The linear model of technical innovation and difusion, whereby innovation is an activity restricted to expert engineers and scientists, has long been revised. Long after artifacts leave the research and development laboratory, the process of design is still taking place. Users are no longer thought of as passive consumers of technology.
Chapter One
32