There has been some discussion on this list in the past about the
value of anthropomorphizing technology, or the value of
using anthropormorphism as way of understanding either how
designers design or how designs design (use-worlds and users
for example). Those interested could look through the archives,
but I am still wondering why
Klaus Krippendorff wrote:
[when] actor-network theory ... anthropomorphizes
technology[,] it does a disservice to design ?
By the way, whilst Latour is his own worst enemy
- inasmuch as he never resists the temptation to let his argument
run to amusing or ridiculous (depending on your mood when
reading) consequences; and his fellow ANTers in the nineties
relished the reflexive playfulness that his writings licensed [see
in particular the discussion the myth of Moses' bus-preventing
bridges on the roads to New York beaches by Woolgar and
Cooper*] -
Latour is insistent that, as an [enthnographic, or more precisely,
an ethnomethodological] sociologist (actor-network-theory
being neither a method nor a theory but merely an imperative
to 'follow the actants'), he is only concerned about
a) the way in which users of technologies, but moreso, developers
of technologies, do talk about technologies in anthropomorphic
ways whilst using or developing technologies
b) the ways in which users and developers of technologies act in
relation to technologies that indicate that the anthropomorphism
they profess, even if in merely metaphoric ways, does appear to
be warranting their actions - ie it is their theory-in-use and not
just a poetic shorthand espoused theory
In other words, Latour (as opposed to some lesser quality
exegetes) is not arguing that technologies are moral agents, but
that to understand comprehensively how technologies get
developed, and how they become useful in the everyday life of
our societies, to the point of being taken-for-granted (ie become
second nature or our artificial ecosystem), one must acknowledge
that developers and users take seriously, ie act on the basis of,
anthropomorphic propositions. Anthropomorphism is more
(effectual) than an 'as if' even if it is less than an ontological truth
(from the modern perspective).
By the way, a link between this discussion about anthropomorphism
and the parallel thread about ethnography, can be found in Latour's
reseponse to Ulrich Beck's work on cosmopolitanism. There Latour
insists that otherness must be granted not only to people to things; in
other words, an authentic ethnographer (or cosmpolitician in Stengers
sense) does not bring assumptions about what does and does not have
agency to encounters with artefacts as well as people. See his
"Whose Cosmos, Which Cosmopolitics? Comments on the Peace
Terms of Ulrich Beck" _Common Knowledge_ Vol.10 No.3 (2004)
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/common_knowledge/v010/10.3latour.html
Cameron
*"Do Artefacts Have Ambivalence? Moses' Bridges, Winner's Bridges
and other Urban Legends in S&TS"
Steve Woolgar and Geoff Cooper
Social Studies of Science Vol.29 No.3 (June 1999)
http://www.jstor.org/view/03063127/ap010095/01a00050/0
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