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//************** Actor-Network Theory - September 30th, 2019 ****************//
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- Okay, it is MONDAY!
    - Today, we're going to talk about Actor-Network theory
    - On Wednesday, we'll wrap up chapter 2 and start reviewing for the midterm
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- So, what the heck is ACTOR-NETWORK THEORY (ANT)?
    - Last week, we talked about SSK theory as a social account of science; this, though, is the other big theory in Sociology in Technology
        - The big proponent of it was (is?) a French guy named Bruno Latour
        - The goal of ALL this sociology stuff is to try and dig behind the common-sense view of science as "discovering facts" and instead study it as ideas passing through groups of people and becoming "accepted" or rejected
    - The big idea with ANT, specifically, is the metaphor that ideas move through a community via networks of actors
        - An ACTOR is just something that uses the idea, whether it's people (scientists, journalists, the crazy guy who built a rocket, etc.), institutions (journals, newspapers, grant funders, etc.), or non-human tools and things (laboratories, particle accelerators, scientific methodologies, newly-discovered particles, etc.)
        - The idea is that over time, the network of agents around an idea grows and makes that idea more influential
            - "But ideas can't be entirely social, right? They involves facts!" That's actually a HUGE debate within this field, with hardcore people in both camps
    - Both SSK and this theory (ANT) use the term "black box," which means things that've been firmly accepted and aren't thought critically about much anymore, and are just used as facts
        - In ANT, exploring how actors are involved in making something a socially-accepted fact is like opening these black boxes

- Latour has tried to use this ANT theory to explain how technologies interact
    - The claim last week in SCOT was that any settled item we have today has a social history behind it when it was in flux (e.g. bicycles, computers, etc.)
        - The chief term there was "interpretative flexibility"
    - What ANT is doing differently is DELEGATION: we tell a thing to do something, and in particular tell technologies to do something for us!
        - In the reading example, for instance, how do we get people to actually drop off their room keys?
            - If we just put up a sign, a few more people might do it, but that's it
                - The sign here is a new actor in our network
            - If we attach an uncomfortable weight to the key, though, then that reminds them to return it, and a lot more people do!
    - Latour claims there's no difference between human actors and non-human things: non-humans simply do jobs a human used to do
        - For Latour, power is NOT something belonging to individual people, then, but to a network of actors, both human and non-human
            - A speed bump, for instance, has "power" in the sense of being connected to the state and being enforced with laws (part of a network), and it replaces the job of a police officer because it'll mess your car up if you don't slow down

- Professor Rosenberg does some research into technology and public spaces, and uses ANT in some of his own work
    - Say you're a skateboarder; you like to grind by sliding your skateboard on stuff, right?
        - So, to stop you from doing that, cities will put "skate stopper" bumps on railings and stuff to disable it as an ANTI-PROGRAM against skateboarding
        - Similarly, there's anti-homeless design in many cities that try to prevent people from sleeping on benches
            - This can unintentionally add people to our network we weren't intending, though - for instance, this kind of bench design could ALSO make overweight people uncomfortable!

- So, when you see technologies, think about what they're trying to get you to do, and who it's trying to get to do that - that's ANT in a nutshell (as opposed to an actual ant in a nutshell)

- Okay; there's no reading for Wednesday's class, but there'll be 3 articles for you to read for Friday ("on trolling - y'know, being a dick on the internet"). Sally forth!