bull llltU~ ~ I 11 rshy I 1 I d L hq d 1 d l Ill I 11

jlll III 111 1111_11 I 11 01111 11 1

It I j 1I1llt I t 1 1t 1 1 10101 I I n 1 1

1 1 111 r ~ I bull

bull l l lIIIlft llll 1 1 I 11 rl

258 Bruta Lal()ur

humans (yes you sociologists there are also relations among things and flllI

relations at that)

24 For the study of users manual see Norman 1988 and Boullier Akrich alllllr

Goaziou 1990

25 Re-inscription is the same thing as inscription or translation or delegation ItUI

seen in its movement The aim of sociotechnical study is Ihus to follow the (bill of re-inscription transforming a silent artifact into a polemical proccs A IIII 1 example of efforts a t re-inscription of what was badLy pre-inscribed outsick of tilt setting is provided by Orson Welles in Ctien Kane where the hero not on ly IHHl J41 11 a cheater for his singing wife to be applauded in) but also bought the journal~ tlr n l

were to do the reviews bought off the art eritics themselves and paid the andil1 to show up~all to no avai l because the wife eventually quit H umans and 111111

humans are very undisciplined no matter what you do and how many pretilmiddot 11II1

nations you are able to control inside the setting For a complete study of thi s dynamie on a large technical sys tem sce Law (dlla

volume and in preparation) and Latour (forthcoming)

26 The stndy of scientific text is now a whole industry see Callon Law iuclltljl 1986 for a technical presentation and La tour 1987 for an introduction

27 The linguistic meaning ofa paradigm is unrelated to the Ku hnian magC qllh

word For a eomplete descrip tion of these diagrams see Latour Mauguiu aCI 1111 (1992)

28 I am grateful to Berward J oerges for letting me interview his key aud hiMkn holder It alone was worth the trip to Berlin

29 Keys locks and codes arc of course a source ofmarvelous fieldwolk il l alltl ~ You may for instance replace the key (cxcorporation) by a memorized cod (i ll poration) You may lose both however since memory is not nc((~~sarily 111111

d urab1c than steel

9 A Summary of a Convenient Vocabulary for the Semiotics of Human and Nonhuman Assemblies Madeleine Akrich and Bruno Latour

~emiotics The stud y of how meaning is built) but the word meanshyillg is taken in its orig inal non textual and nonlinguistic interpretashyliou how one privileged trajectory is buil t out of an indefini te IJllruher of possibili ties in that sense semiotics is the study of order bllilding or path building and may be applied to settings machines Ilotiies and programming languages as well as texts the word socioshy1llltiotics is a pleo nasm once it is clear that semiotics is not limited to g lls the key aspect of the semiotics ofmachines is its abi lity to move I 1111 signs to thi ngs a nd back

Setting A machine can no more be studied than a human beshybull II IS C wh a t the a nalyst is faced wi th a re assemblies of humans and IIClIlilllman actants where the competences and performances are oI l lrillll[cd the object of analysis is called a setting or a setup (in hnlrh a dispositif )

Actant Whatever acts or shifts actions action itself being defined Iy lisl of performances through trials from these performances are 01 01 c((l a sCl ofcompetences with which the actant is endowed the ilIMI pOillt of a metal is a trial through which the streng th of an 011 is ddilled the bankruptcy of a company is a trial through 1 Id I h faithfulness ofan ally ma y be defined an ac tor is a n acta nt bull lIoIwlfl with a character (usually a nthropomorphic)

riIt description inscription or transcription The aim 1 till wulcmic w ritltn a nalysis ora setting is to put on paper the text III 1111 1111 varinll~ actors in the settings are doing to one another 1111 f 111l iplio1l lslIally hy tlw analyst) is the opposite movement of 11 III u lillinlJ Ily thtmiddot t1I~~illl(r iJlVClltOI H1aJlUI~C lUle r) o r designer ( foi l I ti l Ill 1(11ipICl 10 wa UaIIIH~S IUoiogislll) li)J il1Slatl C(~ the Il c r 10111 11 c1middot cmiddotil c1 Iy Ii lilIwill cxl DU NOT 1I1Iu II ICl IIIlt1N( Till KEYS iIiK 10 1111 FIHINI Illmiddot I Ih III I Ilpllhll hllllk l InLNMLtTI III 11 11 I Cmiddot dlllvl

hI II P middotV WImiddotIttII s 1I1tllllmiddot11 ICl KE S Ill HlIUE

260 Madele~ne Akrich and ETwO Laour

CLIENTS T O BE REMINDED TO BRI NG BACK THE KEYS TO THE FRONT DESK The de-scription is possible only if some ex traordinary event-a crisis-modifies the direction of the translashytion from things back to words and a llows the analyst to trace the movement from words to things These events are usuall y the followshying the exotic or the pedagogic position (we are faced with a new or foreign se tup) the breakdown si tu ation (there is a failure that reveals the inner working of the setup) the historical situation (either reconshystruc ted by the analyst through archives observed in real time by the sociologis t or imagined through a thought experiment by the philosshyopher) and finally the deliberate experimental breaching (either at the individual or the collective level ) No description of a setting is possible or even thinkable without the mediation of a trial without a tria l and a crisis we cannot even decide if there is a se tting or not and still less how many parts it co ntains

Shifting out shifting in Any displacement to another frame of reference that a llows an actant to leave the ego hic nunc- shifting out- or to come back to the departure point- shifting in For na rrashytives there are three shiftings actorial (from I raquo to another ac tor and back) spatial (from here to there and back) temporal (from now to then and back ) in the study of settings one has to add a fourth type of shifting the material shifting through which the matter of the expression is modified (from a sign FASTEN YOUR SEAT BELT for instance to an alarm) or from an alarm to an electric link between the b uckle and the engine switch or conversely from an electric current to a routinized habit ofwell- behaved drivers the first direction is call ed shifting down (from signs to things) and the other shifting up (from things to signs)

Progra1n of actions This term is a generaliza tion of the narrashytive program used to describe texts but with this crucial difference that a ny part of the action may be shifted to different matters if I write in a text tha t Marguerite tells Fa ust Go to hell I am shifting to a no ther frame of reference inside the na rrative world itselfwithout ever leaving it if I tell the reader go to page 768 I am shifting already away fro m the narration laterally so to speak since I now wait for the reader-in-the-flesh to do the action if I then write the instr uction go to line 768 not to a reader but to my computer I am shifting the matter of the expression still mori (machine lanshyguage series of 0 and I then voltages throlgh ch ips) I do Iwt COIlIlI

on humans at all to fl_dfl ll till lIctioll Tllf iLilll 011111 d(sfliptioll ora

s(tt iug i ~ 10 wril( down till PIU i 11I1 1 1 at llowl lIld 1111 t~HIIIJlII IIli 1

A Convenient VocabuLmy for the Semiotics of Humall and ollhuman Assemblies 261

of substitutions it entails and not only the narrative program that would transform a machine in a text

Antiprogra1ns All the programs of actions of acta nts that are in conAict with the programs chosen as the poin t of departure of the analysis wha t is a program and what is an antiprogram is relative to the chosen observer

Prescription proscription affordancesJ allowances What a device allows or forbids from the actors- humans and nonhuman - that it anticipates it is the morality of a setting both negative (what it prescribes) and positive (what it permits)

Subscription or the opposite de-inscription The reaction of the anticipated actants- human and nonhumans-to what is preshyscribed or proscribed to them according to their own antiprograms they either underwrite it or try to extract themselves out of it or adjust their behavior or the setting through some negotiations The gap between the prescriptions a nd the subscriptions defines the presshyence or absence of a crisis allowing the se tting to be described if everything runs smoothly even the very distinction between preshyscription and what the actor subscribes to is invisible because there is no gap hence no crisis and no possible description

Pre-inscription The competences that can be expec ted from acshytors before arriving at the setting that are necessary for the resolution of the crisis between prescription and subscription

Circu1nscription The limi ts that the se tting inscribes in itsrW between what it can cope with- the arena of the setting- and wltt it gives up leaving it to the preinscription The glass walls or i 1 circumscribe the setting the word end at the cnd of a 111111

circumscribes the text the rigid photovoltaic cell kit ciICIIIlI KI 1illl ~

itself and keeps away idiots with whom it cannot cOPC Conscription It is never clear where the real lilllit s I I IIIII~

are even though it has inscribed precise walls to itsrlr I ~

does not end with the word end no more than a ha l ~IIIiIH 11 11

glass wall conscription is the series of actors that bave III Ill J~ I II tI for a setting to be kept in existence or that Imv( ICI 1)1 dl ~IU cl I

prevent others from invading the ictting aIld iutllllIpllll 11 II

tenec it is what makes the pre-i wHliption III01( 1 tJldd Ill I

settillg il is IIll 11(lw() lk cITcmiddot~c t orallY se llillg iL II wlllIl 10 Iltllal al( (t ill h n llk III1d liilllliIIIS pllhiislu ls titjt~ 111 1 11I1J I lIulll har Ittcd ~ lIhidlr V 111 111111111111 11 IVtllisill~I IHtl I 11 11 illll blldll -tlt I

IdII 0 I 1111 1I1 IIIV H ( IP ~ II I tW1 11 11 III ~h 1111111 1 11

1 II I II I11 111I11111 ltllll luh 1 Ill illo lI 1111 11 1II lln v 111111111 1 IhM h

262 M adelaille Akrich arId Bnmo Latour

decom p ression chambers or more generally interfaces when a setting is largely made of mate rial ized interfaces it looks like a network in the tech nological meaning of the word elec tricity teleshyphones wa ter distribution 1 and sewage sys tems a re peculiar settings tha t have a network shape

Re-inscription The same thing as inscri ption but seen as a moveshyment as a feedbac k mechan ism it is the redistribu tion of all the other variables in order for a setting to cope with the contradictory demands of many antiprograms it usually means a complicationshya fold ing- or a soph istication of the setting or else it means that the complication the sophistica tion is shifted away into the preshyinscription the choices made fo r the re-inscription defines the drama the suspense the emplotment of a setting

Redistributing competences and performances of actors in a selling The new point of departure for observation instead of the divide between humans and non hu mans the direc tions of this redistri bution are many ex trasomati c intrasomatic soft-wire hardshywi re figurative non figurative linguis tic pragma ti c th e d esigner may shift the competence IS AUTHORIZED TO OPEN THE DO OR either inside a key (excorpcration) or inside a memorized code (incorporation) the code itself may be soft-wired Or hard-wired (tied to a nursery rhyme for instance) the task of ope ning the dool may be either sh ifted to humans or to nonhu mans (through the figurative a ttribution of electronic eyes) the basic competence hI opening the door may either be wri tten down through instructi ons (linguistic level) as for airplanes or shifted to the p ragmatic Icv1 (emergency one-way exit doo rs that open when pressed upon hy a pan icked crowd )

A setting is thus a chain of H (umans) and N (on humans) all endowed with a new competence or delega ting its compe tcnn 1ltgt

another in the chain one may recognize aggregates th a t look li those of traditional social th eopound) social groups machines illt e rii Ht

impact Ascription The attribution process through which tIle ClliXill III

the activity of the setting is fi nally decided in th settin g ilII 10

not a primary mechanism like all the othcrfol h1I a -lt ltolldaIY nlll 1111

instance the movemenl of the setting may Iw -lt(lilwlll( 1 1111 I I~III I III

mous thrust of a machine to lhc Stakhallllvi11 l I)lla _(C Ill W11ll r l lII 11

lhe c1evc r raltlllaljn n-o of ( llgiJlI l r s 10 Ih YNil H 10 111 10 C Ipil ll llllllll

to cnrpolt1c hodic s 10 dlIIICI 111

Scrib oipr p 1 iX fi r bull Itr Wl iu tll

h ~ 11 I~ liltmiddot ti nHIII I 01 ~ I IIIIIH I Ill I nUl l I III 1 11 11 f_ III 1 1 Il plh

A Conuenienl Vocabulary for the Semioticr ofHuman and NouhumQIL Asrembif 261

non-humeR Interface impact of sOcietlJ haped by fiuman 1iI1I machine human biped

middot _middotmiddotmiddotmiddotmiddotmiddotmiddotmiddotmiddotmiddoti-Ili j~ ---~r t1J ~~~~i nc

H- H-H-HrNHlHmiddottH-~H- NH -NH-NH- ~li-H - H~H -NI~-H-N II --NIshy

r 1_ 1_- i __ 1 11 _)

Social relation Amiddotutomatism Machine Impact of machine on society

Figure 91

The usual categories tha t sharply divide humans and nonhumans correspond to an artifi cia l cutting poior along associa tion chains When those are drawn it is still possible to recognize the fo rmer ca tegories as so many res tricted chains Ifwe rep lace H and NH by the name of specific aCfanfs we obtain a syntagm If we sll bsitute a specific name for another we obtain the shifting- paradigms

AND

(I) 1 proramr-L I~n~~o~~mftftfUtmfm (2) 1 ~~ T tftfUHUftftfUttUftU

(3)1 $~ e T UtfHHUftftfUtlUftU ) plust

(0) 1 L IrtOuk e UtuUUtftftfUtff~r~i

ORI

iKure 92 1111 Ilo td manager successively adds keys oral notices written no tices and fi na lly 11111 11 1 wtil-hts ~ach time he thus modified the attitude of some part of (he hotel 1I ~ l uIIHr~ AIOUp while he extends the syntagmatic assemblage of elements

262 M adelaille Akrich arId Bnmo Latour

decom p ression chambers or more generally interfaces when a setting is largely made of mate rial ized interfaces it looks like a network in the tech nological meaning of the word elec tricity teleshyphones wa ter distribution 1 and sewage sys tems a re peculiar settings tha t have a network shape

Re-inscription The same thing as inscri ption but seen as a moveshyment as a feedbac k mechan ism it is the redistribu tion of all the other variables in order for a setting to cope with the contradictory demands of many antiprograms it usually means a complicationshya fold ing- or a soph istication of the setting or else it means that the complication the sophistica tion is shifted away into the preshyinscription the choices made fo r the re-inscription defines the drama the suspense the emplotment of a setting

Redistributing competences and performances of actors in a selling The new point of departure for observation instead of the divide between humans and non hu mans the direc tions of this redistri bution are many ex trasomati c intrasomatic soft-wire hardshywi re figurative non figurative linguis tic pragma ti c th e d esigner may shift the competence IS AUTHORIZED TO OPEN THE DO OR either inside a key (excorpcration) or inside a memorized code (incorporation) the code itself may be soft-wired Or hard-wired (tied to a nursery rhyme for instance) the task of ope ning the dool may be either sh ifted to humans or to nonhu mans (through the figurative a ttribution of electronic eyes) the basic competence hI opening the door may either be wri tten down through instructi ons (linguistic level) as for airplanes or shifted to the p ragmatic Icv1 (emergency one-way exit doo rs that open when pressed upon hy a pan icked crowd )

A setting is thus a chain of H (umans) and N (on humans) all endowed with a new competence or delega ting its compe tcnn 1ltgt

another in the chain one may recognize aggregates th a t look li those of traditional social th eopound) social groups machines illt e rii Ht

impact Ascription The attribution process through which tIle ClliXill III

the activity of the setting is fi nally decided in th settin g ilII 10

not a primary mechanism like all the othcrfol h1I a -lt ltolldaIY nlll 1111

instance the movemenl of the setting may Iw -lt(lilwlll( 1 1111 I I~III I III

mous thrust of a machine to lhc Stakhallllvi11 l I)lla _(C Ill W11ll r l lII 11

lhe c1evc r raltlllaljn n-o of ( llgiJlI l r s 10 Ih YNil H 10 111 10 C Ipil ll llllllll

to cnrpolt1c hodic s 10 dlIIICI 111

Scrib oipr p 1 iX fi r bull Itr Wl iu tll

h ~ 11 I~ liltmiddot ti nHIII I 01 ~ I IIIIIH I Ill I nUl l I III 1 11 11 f_ III 1 1 Il plh

A Conuenienl Vocabulary for the Semioticr ofHuman and NouhumQIL Asrembif 261

non-humeR Interface impact of sOcietlJ haped by fiuman 1iI1I machine human biped

middot _middotmiddotmiddotmiddotmiddotmiddotmiddotmiddotmiddotmiddoti-Ili j~ ---~r t1J ~~~~i nc

H- H-H-HrNHlHmiddottH-~H- NH -NH-NH- ~li-H - H~H -NI~-H-N II --NIshy

r 1_ 1_- i __ 1 11 _)

Social relation Amiddotutomatism Machine Impact of machine on society

Figure 91

The usual categories tha t sharply divide humans and nonhumans correspond to an artifi cia l cutting poior along associa tion chains When those are drawn it is still possible to recognize the fo rmer ca tegories as so many res tricted chains Ifwe rep lace H and NH by the name of specific aCfanfs we obtain a syntagm If we sll bsitute a specific name for another we obtain the shifting- paradigms

AND

(I) 1 proramr-L I~n~~o~~mftftfUtmfm (2) 1 ~~ T tftfUHUftftfUttUftU

(3)1 $~ e T UtfHHUftftfUtlUftU ) plust

(0) 1 L IrtOuk e UtuUUtftftfUtff~r~i

ORI

iKure 92 1111 Ilo td manager successively adds keys oral notices written no tices and fi na lly 11111 11 1 wtil-hts ~ach time he thus modified the attitude of some part of (he hotel 1I ~ l uIIHr~ AIOUp while he extends the syntagmatic assemblage of elements

264 Madeleine Aknch and Bruno AlOftr

or a tt ribution but this origin may be inscribed under many guises in the set ting itself-trademarks signatures legal requirements proofS that standards are fulfilled or more generally what the indusshytry calls traceability the blackest of black boxes are illuminated with such inscriptions

AND (syntagatic association alliances) OR (paradigshyatic substitution translation) T he two fundamental dimenshysions for following the reinscription of a setting hence its dynamic or history the oral or written message BRING YOUR KEY BACK TO THE FRONT DESK is no t necessarily obeyed-antiprogram the shift fro m keys to weights ties the clients to the fron t desk because they have a heavy load in their pockets o ther antiprogrammiddots will appear that will have to be defeated the front line between programs a nd antiprograms maps ou t th e plot of a script and keeps track of its history

10 Technology Testing Text Clinical Budgeting in the UK National Health Service T reuor Pinch Malcolm Ashmore and Michael Mulkay

Defining Technology

Technology unlike science is everywhere W e use it - to obtain crisp fi ve-pound notes from the automa ted bank teller we talk about it-praising the quality of our latest compact disc recording we wri te about it-in an a ttempt to build our careers in the sociology of technology we construct fantasies around it-such as when one of the editors of this collec tion drops us a t the station in his 1938 Citroen and surprised Dutch people look up to see which movie stars have arrived in town we may live by it-the dialysis machine and we may die by it-the ballistic nuclear missile As Langdon Winner ( 1977) remarks technology is a word whose time has come

Providing a definition of something that is so much a part 0(

Ihe fabric of our everyday lives is to offer a hostage to fortune TI editors of The Social Construction of Technological Systems (Bijker IllIglles and Pinch 1987 3-4) deftly dealt with this problem by rciilSing to offer an explici t definition Instead they gave us a series of Iarad igmatic cases in tuitively taken to be technologies Certainly Ill anifcts described in that volume- such as bicycles nuclear IlIi tsilc-l and cooking stoves-would figure on most peoples lists as l lllllieS 0( lc~hnologies But we should be careful Technology like IdllllitCT tenn f is illdexical- it takes its meaning from its use Items Ill cla iscd as techllologies for particular purposes A pertinent exshylI d lk ltHIWS frmf] work on g(~ndcr and technology Ethnographic

11111 1 I II d IIH) I( )IY ill tlw llOmc show that if women are asked to I jl II( II which ill IIIS thcy cOllsid(T W be tech nologies the home cOrnshy

1111 will Idlll(l~ 1 (Irlaillly 1)( illclucin whereas flu ((jokillg stove illliilI (llallll y will 111111 Wll at ulIIISl X a Imiddotdll loloyy all 11(lrlu

I I III rI ~ lIl ld I

1111 lPI l ul III IIIIIII IIIII wodlN I VI II 1f middot1lfto wcmiddot1I 1111 1111 I l ilji l l I Ilr

11 11 11 1 1111 III hlt4 I h llll I 1111111 III IIIUI J1 1111 IW~ 1t 1I1 ~ nit ~ ) IIIII

• Portada
• A Summary of a Convenient Vocabulary for the Semiotics of Human and Nonhuman Assemblies