Latour - On Techniques

8/3/2019 Latour - On Techniques

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FaIl1991+3 N2

COMMON KNOWLEDGECoruuNs

Tl.rePolitical Economy of Hunger:On Reasoningrn.lParciciparion

Anartya SenI

Self-SubversionAlbert O. Hirschttun

l 0Potentially Every Culture

Is Al l CulturesPaul Feyerabend

1 6

Anrrcl tsPaul Feyerabend, umanist

lan Hatking) 1On Techn ica lUed ia r ion-

Philosophy,Sociology,GenealogyBrxn0 LJt1ilr

)L )

Cultural Change-The Thought-Styles fMannheim and Kuhn

Barry Barnes6 '

Modernismand theRejectionof Ornament:

The RevolutionThat Never HappenedJanes Tri//ing79

Doubtrng Thomasand theSenscsf Knowing

E/len Spo/tk11 i 1

The Recruit ing ofJarka,Code Name Hammer,As Voluntary Pol ice nformer:

A Patho-Biography)87J usef Lr,tre&lTranslatedby Ka Polkov-Henley

l 4 )A Future f-orPhilosophy

Lzc Ferrl'Translatedby Franklin Philipr6 )FrcloN/PoprnyThe Blancmange

Kathryn Dartisl j 0Snowball

JeanneHeut,ingr12

RsvrewsChomsky and Derrida

Christopher orrisr19Little ReviewsRic/:ard RotlKathl Eden

Jake A1. YtienChar/esBernsTeintrIarjarie PerloJJ'

Hanna Sega/Pat/ Felerabenr,lThe Editors

l t 0

NorEs oN CoNTRTBUToRS1 8 2


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ON TpcHNICAL Msotar toN *PHIrosoPHY, SoctorocY, GENEALoGY

BrunoLatour

fter Daedalus'escapeiom rhe labyrinth, according o Apollodorus, Minos usedone of Daedalus' own subterfuges o find his hiding place and take fevenge.

lv{inos, n disguise, heralded near and fa r his offer of a reward to anyonewho couidthread he convolr-rtedhel l oia snai l .Daedalus, idden ar the court of King Cocalusand unaware that the offer was a rrap, managed the trick by replicating Ariadne'scunning: he attacheda thread o an ancand, after al lowing it to penetrate he shel lthrough a hole at i ts apex, he induced the ant to weave ts way through this t inylabyrinth.Triumphant, Daedalus laimedhis reward,but King Minos,equal ly rium-phant, asked or Daedalus'exrradition ro crete. cocalusabandonedDaedalr-rs;trli, rheartful doclgermanaged, with the help of Minos' daughters, to divert the hot waterfrom pipes .re ad insral led n rhe palace, o chat t fel l , as f by accident. n Minos inhis bath. (The king died, boi led ike an egg') Only for a brief whi le did Minos outwithis masterengineer-Daedalus was ,rlwaysone fuse, one machination,beyond hisrivals.In the myth of Daedalus, l l things deviare rom the straight ine. The direct path oireasonand scienti l icknowledge-episteme-is not the Path of every Greek. Theclevercechnical norv-howof Daedalus s an instance f nntis,of strategy, f the sortof intelligence fo r which O


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]O COMMONKNO\(/LEDGE

contraptions: statues that seem to be alive, military robots that watch over Crete, anancient version ofgenetic engineering that enables Poseidon's bull to impregnate Pasi-phae with ths {jne13u1-for whom he builds the labyrinth, from which, via anotherset of machines, he manages to escape, osing his son Icarus on the way. . . despised,indispensable, criminal, ever ar war with the three kings who draw their power fromhis machinations. Daedalus is our best eponym for techniqae-and the concept of dae-dalion our best tool to penetrare the evolution of civil ization. His path leads throughthree disciplines: philosophy, sociology, genealogy.

Pnrlosopny

To understand echniques-technical msxn5-and their place n society,we have obe as devrous s he ant to which Daedalus t tachedhis thread.The straight ines ofphi losophyareof no usewhen i t is the crooked abyrinth of machineryand machina-tions, of artifacts and daulalia. we have o explore.That Heidegger's nterpretation oftechnologypasses s he deepest f interpretations l ind surprising.rTo cut a hole atthe apexof the shell and weavemy tl-rread, need o dehne, n opposition to Heidegger,what nrcdiationmeans n the realm of techniques.

For Heidegger, a technology is never an instrument, a mere tool. Does that meanthat technologiesmediateactioni 'No, becausevehaveourselves ecome nstrumentsfor no other end than instrumental i ty tself.Man-no \Womanin Heidegger-is pos-sessed y technology, nd t is a complete l lusion to bel ie ve hat we canmaster t. \Weare,on tlre contrary,Framedby this Gutell. which is in itself one way in which Beingis unvei led. . . Is technology nferior o science nd pure knowledge?No, because,orHeidegger, far from serving as applied science, echnology dominates all, even rhepurely theoretical ciences. y rational izingand stockpi l ingnature,science lays ntothe handsof tecl-rnology,hosesoleend is to rationai ize nd stockpi lenaturewithoutend. Our modern destiny-technology-a ppears to Heidegger radical ly differentfrompoesis.he kind of"making" that ancient raftsmen new how to obtain.Technol-ogy is entirely unique, insuperable, mnipresent,superior,a monster born rn ourmidsr .

But Heidegger s mistaken. wi l l try to show how and in what way he is wrongabout echnicalmediationby using a simple,wel l-known example."Guns ki l l people" s a sloganof thosewl-ro ry to control the unrestricted aleoFguns. To which the National Ri l le Asso ciation epl ieswith anotherslogan, People

rN{art in Heit leggt. ' l ' / : t Qrett it t Cnttrnirg'f t throl,trt t*lOther E.'.w1t. rans. \Vill iam Lovitt (Nerv YorkHarper f t rch Books, 197r ) .


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L ) N T F C H N I ( A L N l E D I A T I O N t I

ki l l people; or guns."The firsrslogan s material ist: he gun actsby virtue of materialcomponents rreducible o the socialqual i t iesof the gunman' On accountof the gun'a goodguy, he aw-abidingcit izen,becomes angerousThe NRA' on the orherhand'offers amusingly nough,given heir pol i t ical views)a sociological ersionmoreolttenassociated irl-r he Left: for rhe NRA, the gun doesnothing in itself or by virtue ofi ts materialcomponenrs. he gun is a tool, a medium, a neutralcarrierof wi l l l f theg u n m a n i s a g o o d g u y , t h e g u n w i l l b e u s e d w i s e l y a n d w i l l k i l l o n l y a p r o p o s . I f t h egunman is a crookor a lunatic, her.r, i th no change n the gun itself,a ki l l ing thatwould in any case ccurwil l be (simply) carriedout more efciently.what does hegun add to the sh( )o r ing ln rhe marer ia l i s t ccount ' ve ry th ing : n i nnoc rn tc i t i zenbecomes criminal by virtue ofthe gun in her hand.The gun enables Fcourse, utalso nstructs,directs,evenpul ls t l-re rigger-and who, wit l -ra knife in her -rand, asnoc wantedar some ime to stab someone r somethingl 'Eachart i fact has ts script 'i ts,,affordance,"ts potential o take hold o[passersby nd fbrce hem to play roles nits srory.By contrast, the sociologicalversion of the NRA renders he gun a neutralcarrierof wi l l r l -rar ddsnotl-ring () he action,playing the roleof an electrical onduc-tor, good and evil tlowing through it effortlessly'

The rwo poslrrons reabsurdlycontradictory. o material istclaims hat guns ki l lby themselves. 7harhe marerialist claims is that the good citizen is rransformedbycarrying the gun. A good cit izen wl.ro,without a gun' might simply be angry maybecomea crininal i f he is holt l ing a gun-as if the gun had the power to changeDr.Jekyl l into Mr. Hyde. Material ists hus make he intriguing suggestion l -rar ur qual-i ty as subjects, ur competences, ur personal i t ies' ependon what we hold in ourhands.Reversing he dogma of moral ism, lre material ists nsist hat we arewhat we[2v6-e,'[x1 we have n our l'rands,rt least'

A s t o t h e N R A , t h e l . c a n n o t m a i n t a i n t h a t t h e g u n i s s o n e u t r a l a n o b j e c t t l r a t i tl.ras o parr in the act of killing. They have to acknowledge

hat the gun addssome-thing, though not to the moral stateof the personholding the gun For the NRA'one'smoralstate s a Platonicessence:ne is born a goodcirizenor a criminal ' Period'As such, he NRA accounr s moral ist-wltzrt matters s what you areJnot what youhave.The solecontribution of rhe gun is to speed he act. Ki l l ing bv {istsor knrvesis slower,dirt ier, messrer. i th a aun, ne ki l ls better, but at no point does t mo-d i f y o n e ' s g o a l . T h u s , N R A s o c i o l o g i s t s a r e m a k i n g t h e t r o u b l i n g S u g s e s t i o n t h a t\\,e anmascerechnrques,hat techniciues renochingmore han pl iableand di l igentslaves.\rhoor whar rs responsrbleor rhe act of ki l l ingi ' Is the gun no more than a pieceoimediating technologyi,The answer to thesequestions dependsupon what nediationmetrns.A first sense f tttet/iationI will offer four) is rl're rogran rt faction' he seriesofgoalsand sreps nd intentions, har an agentcandescribe n a story ike my vignettc


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1 2 C O M M O N K N O W L E D G E

INTERRUPTIONAGENT I

DETOTJRAGENT2

c)

-,/ ^/ r r a-?GoAL3

zfig. 1. First Meaning of Mediation: Translationof the gun (fig. 1). If the agent is human, is angry wanrs ro take revenge,and if theaccomplishment of the agent'sgoal is interrupted, for whatever reason perhaps heagent is not strong enough), rhen the agent makes a detour, a deviation: as we havealready seen,one cannot speakof rechniqueswirhout speaking of daedalia.Agent Ifal lsbackon Agent 2,here agun. Agent 1 enl ists he gun or is enl istedby i t- i t doesnot mtter which-and a rhird agent emerges rom a fi:sion of the other two.

The question now becomeswhich goal the new compositeagent will pursue. If itreturns, after its detour, to Goal 1, chen rhe NRA story obtains. The gun is a tool,merely an intermediary. If Agent 3 drifts from Goal I to Goal 2, then the materialists'story obtains.The gun's ntent, the gun'swil l , the gun'sscript havesupersededhoseof Agent 1;i t is human action hat is no more rhan an inrermediary.Note thar in rhediagram it makes no diflference f Agent I and Agent 2 are reversed.The myth of theNeutral Tool under complete human control and rhe myth of the Autonomous Destinythat no human canmasreraresymmetrical.But a third p ossibi l i ry s more commonlyrealized: the creacionof a new goal that corresponds o neither agent'sprogram ofaction. You had wantedonly ro hur c but, with a gun now in hand,you want to ki l l .)I call this uncertainty about goals rranslarion. haveused his term a number of timesand encountereach ime the samemisunderstandings.r ranslationdoesnor mean ashift from one vocabulary o another, rom one French word ro one English word, forinstance,as f the two languages xisted ndependently.Like Michel Serres, se rans-/atian o mean displacement, ri f t , invention, mediation, he creationof a i ink thatdid not ex.ist eforeand that to somedegreemodif ies wo elemenrs r agenrs.\/ho, then, is the actor in my vignette? Soraeonelse a citizen-gun, a gun-citizen).If we try to u nderstand echniqueswhile assuming har the psychological apacityofhumans s forever6xed, we wil l not succeed n understandinghow techniques recreated nor even how they are used. You are a diftrent person rvith the gun in your

'l n part icular, in Bruno Latour, Sdra,z n Action: Hou to Follou Scienti.rt :td Engircn Tbrotgh Soriet l,(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, t!)8r). My use oi rhe word trant/at iot comes from N{ichel Serresthrough Ir{ichel Callon's sociokrgical usage: Some Elemenrs of a Sociology of Translation: Domesrrcarronofthe Scallopsan d the Fishermen ofSt. Brieuc Bay," nPouer. Atton. dndBelit f : A Nru Socio/ogyfKnou'ledge?ed . John La w (London: Rourledge & Kegan Paul, 1986). 196,)29.


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ATION .J.]

hand.Essences existence nd existences action. f l defineyou by whar you have rhegun), and by the seriesofassociations hat you enter into when you usewhar you have(when you lire the gun), then you are modified by the gun-more so or lessso, de-pending on the weight of the other associationshar you carry.This translarion swholly symmetrical. You are different wirh a gun in hand; the gun is diffrent withyou holding it. You are another subiect because ou hold the gun; the gun is anotherobject becauset hasenrered nto a relationshipwirh you, The gun is no longer thegun-in-the-armory or the gun-in-the-drawer or the gun-in-the-pocket, but the gun-in-your-hand, aimed at someonewho is screaming.What is true of the subject,of thegunman, is as true of the ob;ect, of rhe gun thar is held. A good c.icizenbecomesacriminal, a bad guy becomesa worse guy; a silent gun becomesa Iired gun, a newgun becomes used gun, a sporting gun becomesa weapon.The twin mistake of thematerialists and the sociologists s co scart with essences,hoseof sub.jects r those ofobjects.That starting point renders mpossibleour measurement f rhe mediating roleof techniques. ei th er subjectnor object nor rheir goals) s xed.

Ic is, now, possible o shifc our artention to rhe soneonelp, the hybrid actor com-posed fo r instance)of gun and gunman. \7e must learn to 2g611[usg-l6distribute-actions o many more agents han is acceptableo either the materialsr or rhe sociolog-ical accounr.Agents can be human or (like rhe gun) nonhuman, and eacll can havegoals (or functions, as engineers prefer to say). Since rhe word agent n the caseofnonhumans is uncommon, a better term is actant,a borrowing from semiotics thatdescribes ny enriry thacacts n a pior unti l the artribution ofa figurativeor non6gu-rative role ("citizen," weapon").' Vhy is this nuance imporrant? Because, or ex-ample, n my vignerre, could replace hegunman with "a class f unemployed oiter-ers," ranslating he individual agent nto a col lecrive, r I could talk of"unconsciousmotives," rranslating t into a subindividual agenr. could redescribe he gun as "whatthe gun lobby puts in the hands of unsuspecring hi ldren," translating t from anobject into a col lectiveperson,an inscitucion, r a commercialnetwork; or I coulddeline the gun as"rhe acrion ofa rrigger on a cartridge through the intermediary of aspring and a f i r ing-pin," translating t into a mechanical eries fcausesand conse-quences.

The differencebetweenactor and actant is exacrly rhe sameas n a Fairy ale wherethe suddenperformanceof a hero may be arttributed o a magic wand, or ro elhorse,orto ir dwarf, or to birth, or ro the gods, or to rhe hero's nner competence. singleactant may take many different "acrantial" shapes, nd conversely he sameacror mayplay manydifferent actorial" oles.The same s true of goalsand functions, he ormerassociated ore wirh humans, he larter wirh nonhumans, ur both can be describedas programs of acrion-a neutral term useful when an attribution o[ human goals or

'Scethe de6nit ion rn A. J. Greimas and J. Courts, eds., Sentoticsnd largaage: Ar Au/1tiul Dit ionary(Bloomington : ndiana Un ivers i ty Press, 9f l2) .


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Fig. 2. Second Meaning of Mediation: Composition

nonhuman functions has not beenmade. Do the guns of RogerRal:ltitor the clock andcandleof Disney'sBeartt l nd t/teBeasthave oalsor functionsi 'That depends n thedegree f anthropomorphism nvolved.l

These examples of actor-actant symmetry force us to abandon the subject-objectdichotomy,a dist inction hat prevents nderstanding ftechniquesand evenofsocie-t ies. t is neither peoplenor guns that ki l l . Responsibi l i ty or actionmust be sharedamong the variousacrants.And this is the firsr of the (four) meanings of nrcdiation.One might object,of course, hata basicasymmetry ingers-women makeelectronicchips but no computer has ever made women. Common sense, owever, s not thesafest uide here,arnymore harn t is in the sciences. lre diff iculty we just consideredin the exampleof the gr,rn emains,and the solution is the same: he prime mover ofan actionbecomes new,distributed,and nested eries f practiceswhosesum mightbe made but only i f we respect he mediating role of al l the actantsmobil izecl n thel is t .

To be convincing on this point wi l l requirea short inquiry into the way we talkabout tools. 71-ren omeone el ls a story about the invention, abrication, r useof atool, whether in the animal kingdon.ror the human, whethcr in the psychologicallaboratoryor the historicalor rhe prehisroric, he l i terary structure s the same frg.2)." Someagent hasa goal or goals;suddenly, he accesso rhe goal is interruptedbyrhacbreach n the srraighrparl r rhar dist inguishes )teirrom epistenre. he detour,a

'This posirrc,n has rriggered a lively detrare on the difterenct betrveen agent, i ictor, and actirnt. SeeHrrrl Collins anclScevenYearler,. EpistemologrcirlChicken,' rn Stietces Pra;ti;L rutJ Ct/tni. ed. AndrervPicker ing (Ch icago:Un ivers i t l 'o iCh icago Press.1992) . 101-2( r , and rhe responsen the same volume,Michel Ca l lon and Bruno Larour , 'Donr Throrv rhe Baby Out rv i th the Bath School lA Rep ly to Col l instn d \-earley," -i i (- l i."See, fbr insrirnce. Ben amin B. Beck. An rut I '[,nl Bel:tt nr: '[ lt Ll v a nd t\larrJrrrrt aJ"foalt (Nerv York:Gar land. l9 lJ0) .


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daeda/ion, egins. The agent, frustrated, turns in a mad and random search,and then,whether by insight or Eureka or by trial and error-there are various psychologiesavai lable o account or this m6r n6n1-1hs agent seizes pon some other agent-asrick, apartner,an electrical u11sn1-2ncl hen,so he storygoes, eturns o the previ-ous task, emoves he obstacle, nd achievesl-re oal. Of course, n most tool storiesthere is not one bu t two or severalsubprogramsnested n one another.A chimpanzeemight seize st ick and, inding c too blunt, begin,after2rnotherrisis,anocher ubpro-gram to sharpenhe stick, nventing en routea compound ool. (How fr he muit ipl i -cationof these ubprograms anconrinue aisesnteresting uestionsn cognit ivepsy-chologyand evolutionary heory.)

Although onecan maginemany otheroutcomes for nstance,he lossof the origi-nal goal in the mazeo[subprograms), let us sLrpposehat the original task is resumed.The crtnpositictnf cheaction here s interesting-the lines engchenar eachstep. t7hoperforms h e action?'Agent I plus Agent 2 plr.rsAgent -1.Action is a property ofassociatednti t ies.Agent I is al lowed,authorized, nabledby the others.The chimpplus rhe sharp stick reach and not reaches)he banana.The attribution to one actor ofrhe role of prinre mover in no way weirkens he necessityof a nnpositionof forces oexplain he action. t is by.mistake. r unfairness,hat our headl ines ead, Man fl ies,""Woman goes nro spirce.Flying is a propertyof the wholeassociation f enti t ies hatincludesairportsand planes, aunch padsand ticket counters.B-52s do not l ly, theLI.S.Air Force l ies.Action is simply not a propertyo[humans but of an association factants, nd this is the second ense f what I intend by technicalmediation.Provi-sional " irctorial" oles may be a ttributed to actantsonly be cause ctantsare in theprocess fexchanging; ompetences,ffringone anorhernew possibi l i t ies. ew goals,new functions.Thus, symmetr' ' holds n the case f tbrication s n t l re cirse f use.

But what does rl,nnetrymeani Any given symmetry is de6ned by rvhat s consen'edrhrougli trzrnsf-ormations.n the s)'mmetry bet,een rumans ,rnd nonhumans, I keepconsranr he series fcompetences, fpropert ies, hat agentsareable o swapby over-lappingeachotl-rer. want to si tuatemvselfat the stagebeforewe canclearlydel ineatehumansand nonhumans, oalsand functions, c-,rm nd matter, before he swappingof propert iesand comperencess obsen'able nd interpretable.Ful l- l1edged uman.rctors, nd respectable bjectsout there in the world, cannotbe my srart ing point;rhel 'may be our point of arrival.Doessucha placeexiscTs it more han a mythi

This principle of symmetry may be used o m ap out the ma ny well-esrabl ishedmvths rlrat tell us we havebeenmadeby our tools. Tl-re xpressionHonc,J)tberr, better,It,,r;,,.ftlxr.fabricatnsescri:es.or Hegei and Leroi-Gourhan and Marx and Bergson,a.l i .r lcct icalm()\ 'ernenthat endsby making us sonsand daughters f our ot 'n works.-.\ r tor Heitiegcer. hc reler,anrn-ry'ths that "So [on-e1s r!'e represent eclrnologyas an


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]6 COMMON KNOS(/LEDGE

instrument, we remain held fast in the will to master t. $7epresson past the essenceof technology."sWe will see ater what can be done with dialecticsand the Gestell, uti f inventing myths rs the only way to get on with the job, we should not hesitate oinvent new ones.\Why is t sodif l icult to measure, i th anyprecision, he mediating roleof techniques2Becausehe action hat we are ryrng to measures subject o "blackboxinI," processthat makes he joint productionofactorsand art i facts ntirelyopaque.Daedalus'mazeis shrouded n secrecy. an we open rhe labyrinth and cauntwhat is inside?

Take, or instance, n overhead rojector. t is a point in a sequence faction (in alecture,say),a silent and mute intermediary, aken for granted, completely determinedby its function. Now, suppose he projector breaksdown. The crisis reminds us of theprojector's xistence. s the repairmenswarm around it, adjusting this iens, ight-ening that bulb, we remember that the prolector is made of severalparts, each withits role and function and its relatively independent goals. \Thereasa moment before,the projector scarcelyexisted, now even its parts have individual existence,each it sown "black box." In an instant, our "projector" grew from being composed f zeroparts to one to many. How many actantsare really therei'The philosophy of technologyhas i tr le use or arirhmeric. . .

The crisis continues.The repairmen al l back into a well-routinizedsequence factions, eplacingparts. t becomes lear hat their actionsarecomposed fsteps n asequence hat integratesseveralhuman gestrlres.S(/eno longer focus on an object butsee group ofpeoplearoundan oblect.A shifr hasoccurred etween ctantand media-tor. Figures I and 2 sl-rowed ow goals are rede6ned bv associationwith nonhumanactants, nd how actlon s a propertyofthe whole association,ot part icularlyofthoseactants al ledhuman. However,as igure-i shows, he situation s sti l l moreconfused,since l-re umber of acrants aries rom step to step.The composit ionof objectsalsovaries: ometimes bjecrs ppear table,sometimes hey appear gitated, ike a groupof l-rumansrounda malfunctioningart i fact/quasi-object/quasi-subject.hus, he pro-jectorcountsForone, or nothing, for one hundredparts, or so many humans, or nohuman-and eachpart i tself may coLrnt or one, or zero,for many, or an object, or agroup. In the seven teps ff igure -1, achactionmay proceed orvard i ther he disper-sion of acternts r their integration nto tr single whole (a whole that, soonafter,wi l lcount for nothing). Somecontemporary Westernphi losophies an accol lnt or step 7or step 2, or both, but wl-rat s reqr-rired, hat I propose o develop, s a phi losophythat accounts or al l seven teps.

Look around he room in which you arepuzzl ingover igure3. Consider ow manyblack boxes hereare n the room. Open rhe black boxes; xamine he assembliesn-

"Heiclegger,Qrct or Couern ng'fa*n olog1. 2


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A Ot--. Step : disinteresteHA 6'-+ Step2: interestBo,-.+ !frfi:ffi*i* detour,AB

C Slep3: comBositionoI a new qoatA C Step4: obligatorypassageomtA f f i B Step5: alignmentD Step6: blackboxing

D o--..+ Step7: convergence

Fig. 3. Third Meaning of Mediation: Reversible Blackboxing

side.Eachofthe parcs nside he black box is a black box ful l ofparts. I fany part wereto break, how many humans would immediately materialize around each?How farback in time, away in space,should we recraceour steps ro follow all chosesilententities that contribute peacefully ro your reading chis arricle ar your desk? Rerurneach of theseentities ro srep l; imagine the time when each was disinrerested andgoing i ts own way, withour being bent, enrol led,enl isted,mobil ized in any o[ theothers'plots. From which forestshould we take our woodi, In which quarry should welet the stones u ietly rest?Most ofrheseentiriesnow sit in si lence, s fthey did notexist, invisible, transparenr,mure, bringing onto rhe present scene heir force andtheir action from who knows how many millions of yearspast. They have a peculiarontological status, bur does his mean that they do nor acr, that they do nor mediateaction? Can we say thar becausewe have made all of rhem-who is this "we," by theway2 not I, certainly-they shouid be consideredslaves r roolsor merely evidenceofa Gestell?The depth of our ignorance abour rechniques s unfathomable. \7eare not


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able even to count their number, nor can we tell whether they exist as objects or asassemblies r as so many sequences f skilled actions.. . .

Yet there remain philosopherswho believe here are such things as objects.The reason or such ignorance s made clearer n considering the fourth and most im-portant meaning of ntediation. o this point, I haveused he terms storl andprogranofaction, gaa/ and unction, tr,tlariln and interest,hauan and nonhaman,as if techniqueswere stay-put denizensof the world of discourse.But techniquesmodify the matter ofour expression, ot only its form. Techniqueshave meaning, but they producemean-ing via a special ype ofarticulation that crosseshe commonsense oundary betweensignsand things.

A simple example o[ what I have n mind: a speedbump thar forcesdrivers to slowdown on campus.The driver's goal is translated, by meansof the speedbump, from"slow down so as not to endangerstudents" nto "slow down and protect my car'ssuspension."The two goalsare far apart,and we recognizehere he samedisplacementas n our gun story. The driver's irst version appeals o morality, enlightened disinter-est, and reflection,whereas he secondappeals o pure sel{ishnessnd reflex action. Inmy experience, here are many more people who would respond o the second han tothe lirst: selfrshnesss a trait more widely distributed than respect or law and life-at least n France.The driver modifies his behavior hrough the mediation of the speedbump: he falls back from morality to force. But from an observer's oint of view, itdoesnot matter through which channela given behavior s attained. From her n,indow,the chancellorsees hat carsareslowing down and, for her, that is enough.

The transition from reckless o disciplined drivers has been effected through yetanother detour. Instead of signs and warnings, the campus engineershaveused con-crete. n this context, he notion o[detour, oftranslation,shouldbe modifrednot only(aswith previousexamples) o absorb a shift in rhe definition of goals and functions,but alsoa change n the very matter ofexpression. he engineers'program faction,"make drivers slow down on ca mpus," s now inscribed n concrete. nsteadof "in-scribed," could havesaid "objecti f ied"or "reifred"or "real ized"or "material ized" r"engraved,"but thesewords imply an all-powerful human agenr mposing his will onshapelessmatter, while nonhumans also act, displcegoals, and contribute to theirredefinition.eThe fourth meaning of translation hus dependson the three preceding.

Not only has one meaning, in our example, been displaced into another, but anaction (the enforcement of the speed aw) has been translated into another kind ofexpression. he engineers' rogram is inscribed n concrete nd, in considering his

' 'See,fo r developed examples,Bruno Larour, '\WhereAre the Missing Massesi'Sociologyof a Few Mun-dane Artefacts, io Shaping Technolog1-Bailding So.ietl: Stildiet in SociotethnicalCbange, ed,.Viebe Bijker andJohn La w (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992), 221-19: and, more recenrly, Bruno Latour, Ia lef de Berlin


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O N T E C H N I C A L M E D I A T I O N ] 9

INTERRUPTIONAGENTI-+ Q ",,,,,,,,,,ttttttttttt,lttttttlltltt!!!rr!. )y{f, f irf f \G oNE zFJ(/)zF

DETOUR INSCRIPTIONAGENT2 MEANINGTWO

Delegationig. 4. Fourth Meaning of Mediation:

shifr,we quit the relative omfbrt ofl inguist ic mecaphor nd enterunknown terri tory.\7e haveno t abandonedmeaningful human relations and abruptly entereda world ofbrute material relat ions-although this might be the impression f drivers,used odeal ing with negotiable igns,now confrontedby nonnegotiable peedbumps. Theshifr is no t from discourse o matter because,or the engineers, he speedbump is onemeaningfulart iculationwithin a gamut of possibi l i t ies mong which they choose sfreely as one chooses ocabulary n a language. Thus, we remain in meaning ltut nolongern disccwrse:et we do not resideamong mere objects. Whereare we?

Decour, ranslation,delegation, nscripcion, rnd displacemencequireour t ret tercomprehensionbefore we can evenbegin to elaboratea philosophy oftechniques; andunderstanding hese equires hat we lrnderstand l-rat emioticians al l shift ing.t" f |say o you, or instance, Let us magineourselvesn th e campusengrneers'shoeshenthey decided o rnstall the speedbumps," I transport you nor only into another spaceand time but transl:rte ou into another actor. .rbiJi 'ou ou t oi the scene ou presentlyoccupy.The point of spatial , emporal, and "actorial" shift ing, which is basic o al lhction, is ro make you move without your moving. You madea detour through theengineersoff ice,buc without leavingyour seat.Yor-rent me, for a t ime, a characterwho, with the aid of your patience nd magination, raveledwith me to anotherplace,became notheractor, hen returned o become ourself n your own world again.Thismechanism s called identiJication.y meansof which the "enunciat6s"-l-and ths"snunin1sg"-you-both contribure ro our shifr ing delegates f ourselvesn othercomposite framesof reference Fig. ,1).

In the case f the speedbumps, he shift is "actorial": he "sleepingpol iceman,"asthe bump is known, is not a pol iceman,doesnot resemble ne n the least.The shrftis alsospatial: on the campus road there now resides new ctant thar slowsdown cars(or damages hem). Finally, the shift is temporal: the bump is therenight and day. Butthe enunciator of this technicai act has disappeared rom the 56sns-v,'hs16 are theengineers? here s the pol icemanT-while someone, omething, el iablyacts 1sieu-

l"SeeGreimas an d Courts, Scuiocs nd largaage. On shifting, seealso Thomas Pav el, Fict ional Vorld:(Cambridge: Haruard University Press, 1986).


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40 COMMON KNO\(LEDGE

tenant, holding the enunciator'splace. Supposedly he copresence f enunciatorsandenunciateess necessaryor an act of 6ction to be possible, but what we now have arean absent engineer,a constantly presentspeedbump, and an enunciateewho has be-come the employer of an artifact; as f I were to stop writing this article and its mean-ing would go on being articulated, but more reliably and speedily n my absence.

You may object that this is not surprising. To be transported n imagination fromFrance o Bali is not the sameas o take a plane from France o Bali. True enough,bu thou great is the difitrence? In imaginacive means of transportation, you simultane-ously occupy all framesof reference, hifting into and out of all the delegatedpersonaethat the storyteller offers.Through ction, ego, ic, w.lncmay be shifted, may becomeother personae, n other places,ar other times. But aboard the plane, I cannot occupymore than one frame of referenceat a cime. I am seated n an object-institution thatconnects wo airports through an airline. The act of transportation has been shifteddou'nand n61vv-l6a1n to planes,engines,and automatic pilots, object-institutionsto which has been delegated he task of moving while the engineersand managersareabsent or limited to monitoring). The copresence f enunciatorsand enunciatees ascollapsedalong with framesof reference.An object stands n for an actor and createsan asymmetry between absent makers and occasionalusers. Vithout this detour, thisshifting down, we would not understandhow an enunciator could be absent:Either itis there,we would say, r i t doesnot exist.But by shift ing down, another ombinationof absence nd presencebecomespossible. t is not, as in 6ction, that I am here andeisewhere,hat I am myselfand someone lse,but that an action, ong past, ofan actor,long disappeared,s still active here, oday,on me-I live in the midst of technicaldel-eSares.

The whole philosophy of techniqueshasbeenpreoccupiedby this detour.Think oftechnology as congealed abor. Consider the very notion of investment: A regularcourseofaction is suspended, detour is initiated via several ypes ofactants, and thereturn is a fresh hybrid that carriespast acts into the present and permits rts manymakers to disappearwhile also remaining present. Such detours subvert the order oflims-in a minute I may mobilize forces ocked in motion hundreds or m.illions ofyearsago. The relative shapes factants and their ontological statusmay be completelyreshuffled-techniques act asshape-changers, aking a cop out of a bump in the road,lending a policeman the permanenceand obstinacy of stone.The relative ordering ofpresenceand absence s redistributed-we hourly encounter hundreds, even thou-sands,of absent makers who are remote in time and spaceye t simultaneousiyactiveand present.And through suchdetours,6nal ly, he pol i t ical order s subverted, inceI rely on many delegated actions that themselvesmake me do things on behalf ofothers who are no longer here and that I have not elected and the course of whoseexistence cannot even fetface.

A detour of this kind is not easy o understand,and the dif6culty is compounded


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O N T E C H N I C A L M E D I A T I O N 4 1

by the accusationof fetishism made by critics of technology.tl It is us, the humanmakers(so they say), ha t you see n those machines, hose mplements, us under an-other guise, our own hard work. \7e should restore he human agency(so they com-mand) that stands behind those dois. \Weheard this story told, to different effect, bythe NRA: Guns do not act on their own, only humans do so .A fine story, buc too lare.Humans are no longer by themselves.Our delegation of action to orher crnrs harnow shareour human existence s so far progressed hat a program of antifetishismcould only lead us to a nonhuman world, a world before he mediation of artifacts, aworld of baboons.

On the other hand, we cannot fall back on materialism either. In artifacrsand tech-nologies we do not frnd the efficiency and obduracy of macter, mprinting chains ofcauseand effect onto malleable humans.The speedbump is not made of matter, ulti-mately; it is full of engineersand chancellorsand lawmakers,commingling their willsand their story lines with those ofgravel, concrete,paint, and standard calculations.The mediation, the technical translation, that I am trying ro understand esides n theblind spot where societyand matter exchangeproperties.The story I am telling is noca Homoaba story,where the courageousnnovator breaksaway from the constraintsofsocialorder, o make contactwith hard and inhuman !ug-a6 last-objective matter. Iam struggling to approach he zonewhere some, hough not all, ofthe characteristicsof concretebecomepolicemen, and some, hough not all, of the characteristics f po-licemen becomespeedbumps. . . .Daedalus olds, weaves,plots, contrives, finds solutions where none is visible, usinganyexpedient r hand n the cracks nd gapsofordinary routines. wappingproperriesamong inert and animal and human materials. Heidegger is no Daedalus:he seesnomediation, no letting go, no stepping aside,no plerir n the technical world, oniy inter-mediaries,a terri$'ing kind of intermediary, e^ting away at the arrisan and the engi-neer, at ail humans, turning them into purposeless nstruments for the purposelessgoals of technology. n multiplying mediators, am I falling vicrim to the humanisticillusion ridiculed by Heidegger?Or perhaps am falling into the materialistic trap ofattributing social,ethical, and political mores o artifacts,which they cannot possiblypossess. think that the philosophy of technology forcesus ro relocatehumanrsm.

Humanism is no t to be found at the right pole of Figure ), where the word hnnan-lrrz is found-nor in imagining some demiurgic Prometheus mposing an arbitraryform on shapelessmatter, nor in defending ourselvesagainst the invasion of purelyobjective forces hat threaten the dignity of the human subjecr. Humanism is to beIocatedelsewhere, n the position I am groping to define betweenantihumanism and

' Afte r Marx, of course, see especially the classicargument by Langdon Winner, "D o Artefacts HavePolit ics?" Daedalu 109 (1980): 121-36.


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oF1

FF]


Materialism:objectivepropertiesofmatter urally break throughthe social andmental nertia

Aatihumanism:meanshave becomeendswithout ends

Sociologism:subjectsmpose ormsand categories ntoshapelessmatterHumanism:meansare mereintermediariesor humangoals

Symmetry:actantseshufflingpropeftiesy crossoversFig. 5. New Locus or Humanism

"humanism." \Wemust learn to ignore the definitive shapesof humans, and of thenonhumanswith which we sharemore and more of our existence. he blur that wewould then perceive, he swapping of properties, s a characteristicof our premodernpast, n the good old days of poesis,nd a characteristicoFour modern and nonmodernpresent swell . One thing Heideggergot right is his cri t ique of the "humanist"NRAstory, of the notion that tecl-rnologies nd tools permit humans to hold their proiectsIirmly in hand, ro impose heir wi l l on objects.rrBut Herde gger dded o the dangersof technology: he added he peril of ignoring how much humanity is swapped hroughthe mediating role of techniqu es-and he added he peri l of ignoring the function,genealogy, nd history of thosesociotechnicalmbrogl ios (to which I no w turn) thatconstruct ou r political life and our fragiie humanity.

SocrorocvStanieyKubrick, in 2001 A Space d1sse1,ffersus a modern myth aspowerful as hatof Daedalus.Unidentied extraterrestrialminds havesent to the primeval eartha hugeblack box, a monoli th, whrch a band of scr eamingmonkeysnow cautiouslyexplore.The {ilm doesnot indicate what the properties ofthe box are(apart from blackness-as opaqueas he genealogyoftechniques I am trying to fathom here),but the box hasa mysreriouseffect on the apes. s this because hey are ocusing their attention for thefirst rime on an object or because f what this particular object contains? Whicheverthe case, hey innovate, aking great strides n the directron ofhumanity. A huge bone

r:Bruno Latour, Ve Hat,e Ntt 'er BeenModern. trans. Catherine Porter (Cambridge: Hanard UniversityP r e s s . 1 9 9 l ) .


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O N T E C H N I C L M E D I A T I O N 4 1

lying at the water hole is suddenly seizedby a rapidly evolving ape, ransformed ntoa tomahawk, and used to break the skull of an enemy primate. (Toolsand weapons,intel l igence nd war, commence l l at once n this mascul inemyth.) The Prometheanape, hrilled by this invention and suddenchange n the fortunes ofwar, launches hebone into the sky; the bone whirls around, rl-ren-again, suddenly-becomes a vasrfururist ic station,slowly turning on itself in the depth of space. rom tools to hightechnology,millions of yearsare summarized n one beautiful cut.S7ere cholarshipas efhcient as he art of lilm, I would have you progressas rapidly asKubrick's apes-from a band of primates linked only by social ies to an evolved spe-ciesof sociotechnical umanswho admit their inferior brethren, he nonhumans, otheir social hinking. But to br ing this about wouid be quite a miracle,sincesocialtheory is as devoid of artilacts as were Kubrick's apes before the monolith arrived.Like the apes, t is on the m onoli th, precisely, hat I wi l l focus my attention:\What is a sociology f objects?How did objects ome o enter he human col lective?Through which entry points?' 7e now understand that techniques do not exisr assuch, that there is nothing that we can define philosophically or sociologicallyas anartifact or a piece of technology.To be sure, there is an adjective tecbnicalhat we usein many different situations, and rightly so . Let me briefly summarize its variousmeanings.It designates, irst, a subprogram, or a seriesofnested subprograms, ike the onesdiscussedabove. \Zhenwe say "this is a technical point," it means hat we have todeviate for a moment from the main task and that we will eventually resume ournormal course of acrion, whlch is the only focus worth our attention. A black boxopensmomentari ly,and wil l becomeblack again, compietely nvisible in the ma insequence f action.

Second, echnical esignates he subordinate role of people, skills, or objects thatoccupy his secondaryunction of being present, ndispensable, ut invisible. t thusindicatesa special ized nd highly circumscribed ask, clearly subordinate n a hier-archy.

Third, the adjectivedesignates hitch, a snag,a catch, a hiccup in the smoothfunctionrng of the subprograms,as when we sav that "there is a technical problem tosolve irst." Here, the deviation might not lead us back to the main road, as with thelirst meaning, but may threaten he original goal entirely. Tethnica/s no longer a meredetour, but an obstacle,a roadblock. \What should havebeen a means,may becomeanend, at least or a while.

The fourth meaning carrieswith it the sameuncertainty about what is an end andwhat is a means. Technical ki l l ," "technicalpersonnel," esignate unique abi l i ty, aknack,a gift , and also he abi l i ty to makeoneself ndispensable,o occupyprivi legedthough inferior positions that I have called, borrowing a military term, obligatorypassage oints. Technicai people,objects, or skills are at once nferior (since he main


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when we talk about something technical, we talk about displacement,conflicts, re-placement, nski l l ing, deski l l ing,and reski l l ing;neverabout a mere"thing." Techni-ca l skill is not uniquely possessedy humans and reluctantly gfanted to nonhumans.Skills emerge n the zoneof transact.ion,hey afepfopefties of the assembly ha t cifcu-lare or are rediscributedamong human and nonhuman technicians,enabling and au-thorizing them to act.

s/e must consider, hen, who is mobilized by what kinds of action. ou r first stepis to look for the folding of time, which is a characteristicof technical action. )nce Ihavebought the calibratedPasteurpipette, I can hengo on with my skilled rask.OnceI have urned the knobs of the automatic pipette, 1 can hen all back on a lessskilledtask. The enunciator, n other words, may absent tself. Even my own action of a mo-ment ago is now foreign to me, though still present in a new guise. Through myproductive detour, my investment, a relative irreversibility is set in place.

Bu t we havealso o recognize he role of economicmediation in the folding of timeand space.Pasteurcould have produced his pipette at the local glassblower's hop. Icannot manufacturean automatic pipette, stiil lessa pipetting robot. \fhich meansthat, in the gesrureof pushing on an instrument twice with my thumb, I take a longdetour through the manufacturing pfocess.Of course, he detour is invisible-exceptas an item on a long list of supplies order out of gfant msnis5-unlss a crisis,eitherin my budget or in rhe pipette, occufs, or if I move my laboratory ro Africa or toBosnia, in which case will come ro realize that, in addition ro rhe simple task ofpushing twice with my rhumb, piperting requires ha t I ensure he reliabiiity of animmensesefiesof other actants.The question known as"the division of labor" may inno sense e differentiated from the question ofwhat is technical.'"

I[ever one comes ace o facewith an obiect, that is not the beginning bu t the endof a long processof proliferating mediators, a process n which ali relevant subpro-grams, nestedone into another,meet in a "simple" task (e.g., pipetting). Instead ofthe kingdom of legend in which subiectsmeet objects,one generally frnds oneself nthe realm o{ thepersonne orale, f what is in English called the "corporatebody" or"artificial pefson." Three extraordinary terms! As if the personalitybecomesmoral bybecoming collecrive,or collecrive by becoming artificial, of plural by doubling theSaxonword bodywith aLatin synonym, corpas. body corporate s wha-tk!-pipetteand I, in my example, have become. fle are an objecc-institution. The point soundstrivial if appiied asymmerfically. "o f course,"one mighr say,"a piece of rechnologymusr be seizedand acrivaredby a human subiect,a purposeful agenr." Bur the pointI am making is symmetrical: \whar is true of the "object"-the pipette doesno t existby itself-is still truer of the "subiect." There is no sense n which humans may besaid to exist as humans wichout entering into commerce with what authorizesand

' lNeverrhe less, he clsic work by Emile Durkheim, The Diriion of Labor n Society,rans. lW . D. Halls(1891; Ne w York: Free Press,1984), does not mention rechniquesan d art ilacts at all.


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4 6 C O M M O N K N O \ T L E D G E

CrossoverEnrollment XMobilization

COLLECTIVEDisplacement Translation

Entrv Point of Nonhumans into the Collectiveig. 6. The

enables hem to exist (i.e., to act). A forsakenpipette is a mere piece of matter, bu twhat would an abandonedpipetter be? A human, yes(a pipette is only one artifactamong many), but not a molecular biologist. Purposefulaction and intentionality maynot be propertiesof objects, but they are not properties of humans either. They arethe propertiesof institutions, dispositifs. nly corporatebodies are able ro absorb heproliferation ofmediators, to regulate heir expression, o redistribute skills, to requireboxes o blacken and close.Boeing-747s do not fly, airlines lly.

Objects that exist simply as objects, inished, not part of a collective ife, are un-known, buriedundersoi l .Realob ects realways artsof nsti tut ions, rembling n theirmixed statusasmediators,mobilizing faraway andsandpeople, eady o becomepeopleor things, not knowing i f t hey arecomposed fon e or oFmany, fa blackbox countingfo r one or of a abyrinth concealingmuititudes. And this is why the philosophy of tech-nologycannotgo very ar:an ob ect s a sub ect hat only sociology anstudy-u to.io1-ogy, n any case, hat is prepared o dealwith nonhuman aswell ashuman actants.

In the newly emerging paradigm (frg. 6), we substitute collectiue-defrnedas anexchangeof human and nonhuman properties nside a corporatebody-for the taintedword society.n abandoning dualism, our intent is not to abandon the very distinctfeaturesof the various parts within the collective.\What the new paradigm attends toare the moves by which any given collective extends ts social abric to other entities.Firsr, there is Translation,he meansby which we inscribe n a different matter featuresof our social order; next, the crossorcr,hich consists n the exchangeof propertiesamong nonhumans; hird, the enrollment, y which a nonhuman is seduced,manipu-lated, or induced into the collective;fourth, the mobilizatioz f nonhumans nside thecollective, which adds fresh unexpectedresources, esulting in strange new hybrids;and, Irnally,displacenent,he direction the collective takesonce ts shape,extent, andcomposition have been altered.

The new paradigm provides a basis or the comparisonof collectives,a comparisonthat is completely independent of demography (o f their scale,so to speak). Vhat westudents of sciencehave all done over the last lifteen years s subvert the distinctionbetween ancient techniques the poesis f artisans)and modern (broad-sca1e,nhuman,


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O N T E C H N I C A L N T E D I A T I O N 1 , 1

domineering) echnologies. he dist inction was nevermore than a preludice.Thereis an extraordinarycontinuity, which historians and philosophersof technology haveincreasingly made legible, between nuclear plants, missi le-guidancesystems,computer-chip design, or subway auromarion and the ancient mixture of societyandmarrer rhar erhnographersand archaeologists ave studied for generations n the cul-turesof New Guinea,Old England,or sixteenth-century urgundy'5

The difference etweenan ancienror "primit ive" col lectiveand a modern or "ad-vanced" one is not that the former manifests a rich mixture of social and technicalculture while the latter exhibitsa technology evoidof t ieswith the socialorder.Thedifference, ather, s that the latter translates, rosses ver,enrolls, and mobilizes noreeletnents,ore intimately connected,with a more linely woven social fabric than theformer does.The relation between rhescale f collectivesand the nunberof nonhtmansenl isred n their midst is crucial.One {rnds, f course,ongerchainsof action n "mod-ern" col lectives, greaternumberof nonhumans machines, utomatons, evices) sso-ciatedwith oneanother, ut onemust not oveflook he sizeof markets, he number ofpeople n their orbits, he ampli tude of the mobil ization:more objects, es'but manymore subjecrs swell . Thosewho have ried to dist inguish hese wo sortsof col lectiveby artributing objectivity to modern technology and subjectivity to low-tech paesisweredeeplymistaken.Objects and subjectsaremade simultaneously,and an increasednumberof subjectss directly related o the numberof obiects rirred-brewgd-in16the collective.The adjective nodern doesnot describean increaseddistancebetweensocietyand technologyor their al ienation,but a deepenedntimacy,a mofe intricatemesh,berweenthetwo:notHl i lnfabernorevenHonnfaberfaLtricatus.butHoruofaberso-cia/is."'

Ethnographersdescribe the complex relations implied by every technical act intradit ional cultures, he long and mediatedaccesso matter that these elations up-pose, he intricate pattefn ofmyths and rites necessafyo produce he simplest adzeorsimplest por, as if a variety of social graces and religious mores were necessaryorhumans o interactwith nonhumans.' 'But do we, even oday,haveunmediatedaccessro nakedmatrer/ Is our interactionwith natureshort on ri tes,myths, and protocols?To believe hat would be ro ignore most of the conclusions eachedby modern sociolo-gists of science nd technology.How mediated,complicated,cautious,mannered,evenbaroque s the accesso matter of any piece of technology! How many 56i1665-116

''See, for instance, Donald A. MacKe nzie, lnrenirg AtcrraLl: At Hitttca/ Sociologl'of Nuclear lli:.rileGtidanrc S1'rrazi (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990); Bijker and Law, eds., Sbaping Technologl'-Bt)lditg Sacietl':Viebe E. Brjker, Thomas P Hughes, and Trevor Pinch, eds., The SocialCanstraL't ianf TethnalopcalS1:tenu:Neu Directionsr tb e Sociologlnd Hittory of Ta'btologl(Cambridge: MI T Press,1987).

"'See Latour, La clef de Berltn.'- For a recent example, see Pierre Lemonn ier, ed., Technological hoices:fransforruationin Mateal C lnretSincebe Neo/ithic London: Routled se , 1991).


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functional equivalent of rires-are necessaryo prepareaftifacts for socialization!Howmany persons,crafts,and institutions must be in place for rhe enrollment of evenonenonhuman! The time has come for ethnographers o describeour biotechnology,arti-ficial intelligence, microchips, steelmaking, etc.-ths fraternity of ancient and mod-ern collectiveswill then be instantly obvious. What appears ymbolic in the old collec-tives is taken literally in the new; in contexts where a few dozen people were oncerequired, thousands are now mobilized; where shortcurs were once possible, muchlonger chains of action are now necessary. ot fewer but more, and more intricate,customs and protocols,nor fewer mediations bu t more: many more.

Aramis, an automatedmetro in the south of Paris, s a choiceexampleof what Imean-a sleekpieceof matter confronting the human subject (a passenger)eady toboard t.r8 Aramis hasno driver. The only human lefc n the sysrem, he controller,cantake over, by remote control, in the event the automatic equipment fails. The only"driver" is one of the six onboard compurers.Aramis is a train without tracks and canturn at will like an automobile. The passenger asnorhing to do , no t evendecideonthe route to his destination. Aramis does t all. In other words. the ideal Frankensteinmyth: a powerlesshuman, boarding an automated train, far from traditional techno-logiesand their rich sociotechnical ix.

Bu t a few yearsago, inJuly of 1981, what ethnographersand archaeologrsrseverseewasseen: technology efore t becomes n objector an insrirucion, technologywhen it is still apnject Aramis was a scalemodel, little more than a sketch.Assembledaround its benign and futuristic shapewere dignitaries, spokesmen or conflicting con-stituencies. A photograph at that time showed the director of the RATP, the Parisrapid-transit system,a communist in love with Aramis, symbol of modernization(though his own techniciansare extremely skeptical about the feasibility of the sys-tem); then the pres.ident nd vice-presidenrof the lle-de-FranceRegion, two men onthe right of the political spectrum with no special nterest in Aramis as a symbol ofanything (al l they want is a rransporracionysrem,period, ro decongesthe south ofParis); then CharlesFiterman, Minister of Transportation,another communist-oneof the three communists in the first government of President Mitterand (Fiterman isalsopreoccupiedwith modernization, with high tech, but lacks he expertise o evalu-ate the feasibiliry of the scalemodel and is anyway about to leave the government);and finally,Jean-LucLagardre, he flamboyantsymboi of French high-tech capitalismand the buiider of Aramis, closely nvolved with state echnocracy, ut deeplyskepticalof the prospects or Aramis' technical successhe would prefer a simple automatedsubway like VAL in Lille, but is forced to embracewhat Fiterman, the Minister, andClaudeQuin, the director of the RATP, consider theFrenchsymbol of modernization).

' 'On this example, seeBruno Larou , Aranis, ou .tmourdcJ ecbniqtesParis: a Dcouverte, I 992), forth-coming from Haward University Prcss, rans. Catherine Porter. For a briefer presentation,se eBruno larour,''Ethnography of a'High-Tech'Case: About Aramis," in Lemonnier, Technologicalhois, 12-98.


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For two years, he dignitaries have discussed he project, which has been under wayfor frfteen.They have assembled o sign the contract for the final industrial test ofAramis.

Looking at a project before t is an object, one sees ot only the people who inhabitit but also he transiation they wish to effect: five spokesmen, ive versionsof Aramisconvergingon a scaiemodel whose ask is to reconcile heir notions of what is politi-caliy valuable, echnically feasible,eflicient, expedient,and prolitable. But what ofthemyth of technology, he Frankensteinianautonomy of design? M. Lagardre,captainof industry, wants a semitraditional subway like the VAL but is obliged to Presshisengineers or a hypersophisticated ystem o please he 661n61ni56s-who areworriedabout a possiblestrike of the drivers' union againstautomation and thus want a systemthat looks as different from a subway as possible.Aramis swallows the contradictorywishes of all involved, absorbs hem, and becomesknotted, self-contradictory,andlabyrinthine.

Aramis did not exist enoagh. echnical systemshave many intermediary degreesofrealization.No t long before transporting JacquesChirac, the former prime minister,Aramis was a construction site in the south of Paris; three or four yearsafter, a homefor destitutes; hen a sleekcabin in the Museum of Transportation. Aramis ceased oexist. Not one real passenger ver boarded t. From a project it becamenot an obiectbut a fiction. And even if it had at some point existed as a transportation system,Aramis would have been not an object but an institution, a corporatebody includingpassengers, ngineers, ontrollers,and many nonhumans,all safely black boxed." Themorl of this tale is not that the more advanced echnology becomes, he less(andfewer) people have to do wrth it . On the contrary, in order to move from frction toproject, from project to trial, and from trial to transportarionsystem,ever more peopleare required. It is because o many abandonedAramis that it began to cese xistingand reversed ourse: rom trial to project, from project to ction, and from liction toutopia, the utopia of PersonalRapid Transit that someAmerican cities, blissfully igno-rant of Aramis' fate, are now taking up again.The new paradigm is not without its problems. To view people and nonhumans asinteracringwithin col lectives,o del ineobjectsas nsti tut ions, o fusesubjectand ob-ject in a corporate body, we need to know what a collective, an institution, and acorporarebody are. The difculty is that we cannot rely on how social heory definesthese,since, or many sociologists,a social order is the sourceof explanationand notwhar needsexplaining. These sociologists begin by delineating social phenomena,long-term socialcontexts,global institutions, overarchingcuitures; hen proceedwithwhat they take to be their important empirical task, to trace developmentsand trans-formations. It is a given, for them, chat social order exists.The question of how socialorder emergeshasbeen abandoned o political philosophy, o the prescienti6cpast ou tof which Durkheim's descendants aveescaped.Weare, ike the bull dancers f Minos,


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5 O C O M M O N K N O N T L E D G E

on the hornsof a di lem ma: social heory s rhe way beyond he l imits of the phi losophyof techniques, ut social heorists el l us rl-rat he emergence f socialorder is br-rtphi losophicalmyth. The del ini t ion of socialcontexrby the socialsciencess of l i t t lehelp since t doesnot include rhe nonhumans'role. 7hat socialscientists al l societyrepresents alfofthe dual istparadigm har shouldbe ett isoned. "society" s not thesameas he "col lective" am trying to del ine.Hence, n order o understandechnicalmediation,we alsohave o rede6ne lar.ee art of social l reory, ringing back nto i t ,I am afraid,many phi losophical uestions hat i t l .rasried to dispense ich too quickiy.

Our tirsk, fortunately, s madeeasierby a radical movement in sociologvn,hose ea limport and impact has yet to be felt in the study oi technology and that is called,rather horribly, "ethnomethodology." \What this movement does s take seriously heinnocuous ssumption hat people onsrruct ociety. oci ir l rder, he ethnomethodolo-gistsargue, s not zr iven, but the resultofan ongoing practice hrough which actors,in the courseoftheir interaction,elaborate d hoc rr-rleso coordinate ctivi t ies.Theactors are helped of courseby precedenrs, ur thoseprecedentsare not in themselvessufficient to causebehavior,and they are translated,adjusted, recon6gured, nvented(in part) to makedo in view of shift ing and unexpected ircumsrances.Ve col lectivelyelaborate n emergingand historicalerentwhich was not planned by any part ic. ipantand which is not explainable by what happened before the event or what happenselsewhere. l l dep ends n the localand practical nteraccionsn which rvearepres-ently engaging.

The theory seemsabsurd in view of the claim most reasonable ociologistsandhistorianswould make about, fcrr nstance, ur presentcircumstance: here existsabroad-scaleontext hat accountsbr my writ ing and vour reading his art icle, br ourknowledgeof what a scholarlyart icle s, what a journal does,what role inrel leccualsplay in America and France.At most, the reasonable ociologist tells the radical one,the agent can make local adjustments n a context long sinceand farawayestablished.So runs the thirty-year debate betweenethnomethodology and mainstream sociology,and the sti l l older dispute betweena.eency nd strucrure.

The new paradigm am proposing or the srudl ' o[ techniqu es br. i i rteshesedis-putes. Ler us admit that the ethnomethodologistsare right, that there exisconly locaiinteractions,producing social order on the spot. And let us admir that mrrinstreamsociologistsare right, that actions at a distance may be rransported to bear on localinteractions.How can theseposit ionsbe reconci ledT n action n the distant past, na farawayplace, by actors now absent, can stil.l be present, on condition that it beshifted, ranslated, elegated, r displaced o oth!r typesofactants, hose havebeencalling nonhumans.My word processor, our copy ol CottntanKnou'ledge. xford Uni-versity Press, he InternationalPostalUnion, al l of them organize, hape, nd l imitour interactions. o forget heir existence-their pecul iarmannerof being absent ndpresent-would be a great error. When we say thar "we" here present are engaged nour local nteractions,he sum of chose ho aresummonedmust includeall the other


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O N T E C H N I C A L M E D I A T I O N 5 I

personae hat have been shifted down previously. "We" is not a simple synoptic andcoherent category.The notion of a present and local interaction is subverted by animmensecrowd of nonhumans, achdeterminedby irs own shifts n rime, space, ndactanr.

But to infr, from the conciusion rhat we are nor alone in our interactions, rheexistence f an overarching ocietywould be an equal lygrear mistake,since r wouldoblige us to shift attention from the micro co the macro level, as if the macro levelexisted ndwasmadeofother stuff,ofmaterialocher ha n the presenr ocal nteractron.The dispute about the respective ole ofagency and srructure, of"habitus" and "field"(to useBourdieu's ornrula),of micro inreraction nd macrosocialcontexr, eveals, yits very failure, the presence-absencef rechnical mediation. Of course,erhnomerho-dologistsare riglrt to cri t ic ize raditronalsociologywith i ts fanciful macro evel,butthey arewrong to conclude hat there s sucha thing asan absolutelyocal nreracrion.No human relationship exisrs in a lramework homogeneousas to spaceJ ime, andactants.However, he error that traditional sociologymakes s asgrear,when it forgetsto ask how a difference fsc,rle s obcained, ow power is exerted, rreversibi l i tysetsin, and rolesand unctionsaredistributed.Everything n the defini t ionofmacro socialorder is due to cheenrol lment of nonhumans-1h1 is, to technicaimediarion.Eventhe simple effect of duration, of long-lasting social orce,cannot be obtained witl-routthe durabi l i ty of nonhumans o which human local nteracrions avebeenshifted.The social theory of technrquesoverhaulssociology,even as it repairs the weak-nesses f ethnomethodology. ociety s the outcomeof local consrruction, ut we arenot aloneat the construction i te, since herewe alsomobil ize the many nonhumanschrough which the order o[space and time hasbeen reshuffled.To be human requiressharingwith nonhumans.Social heory may be better ar the rask of de l ining what ishuman chanphilosophy is , bu t only rvhenand insofras t accounts or socizrl omplex-i ty, the inventionoftools, and the suddenappearancefthe black box. am thinking,sti l l , of StanleyKubrick, his daring cur rhar transformed whirl ing tomahawk nto asi lent space rrion, urning slowly in the deprh ofspace,but I would l ike, ofcourse,to dispensewith an appeal o any exrraterresrrialbenefactor.

GgNraLocv'e11 a.l t . : Clairbornesits nearNiva, looking aroundvigi lantly. BeforeClairbornecanmake a move, Crook arrives, very nervous.Boch Clairborne and Crook wanr Niva'sfavors,but Clairborne is her old friend. Crook has usr arrived in rhe group and is sounpredictable hat no one trusts him. Clairborne noves oward Niva, bur this does

' 'An earlier version oft l ie fbllowing h beenpublished in a special ssrrc i Aneican Bebaoral Scientist,i 7 ( l 9 c ) 1 ) : 7 9 1 S 0 S . u n d e r t h e t i t l e " P r a g m a t o g o n i e s . . . A M y t h i c a l A c c o u n t o f H o r v H u m a n s a n d N o n -Humans Swap Propert ies."


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' 2 C O M M O N K N O \ T L E D G E

not stop Crook, who conrinues o close n. Tensionmounrs.Niva is caught betweenconfl ict ingemotions,wanting to f lee, er worried o be on her own so nearCrook.Sheopts to stay near Clairborne, whicl-rseemschesaferbet. The others watch carefully roseewhat will happen.Sharman pays specialattention since the oLlrcome ould affcthim. Crook ungesat Clairbornebut, instead f running away,Clairborne rabsNiva'sinfant. The infnt cl ings trusringly ro i rs big friend. Suddenly he actionshifts,as fClairborne had erected a protective shield around himself and Niva. Frustrated, butno t daring to make a further move toward them, Crook turns elsewhere o venr hisfrustration. As he suspected,Sharman becomes he target of Crook's aggression.Thetwo run off exchanging rhreats,and the small group around Niva relaxes.Clairbornehuddles closer o Niva; the infant snuggles n her lap. Now it is Sharmanwho has heprob lem. t i s 11 :01a .u

This bit of soapoperadoesnor come from Da/las or any of the other programs wirhwhich Americans conquer television setsaround the world, but from Shirley Scrum'sstudy of baboons n Kenya. I want to begin the third part of this discussionnot wirha technicalmyth l ike thar of Daedalus r l ike that of Kubrick's 200L ;tt with thisexemplary study of a nonrechnicalbut highly complex society.This group of baboons,called Pump-House, which had the good fortune to be studied fbr twenty years DyStrum, offers he bestbaseline, he bestbenchmark, o regisrerwhat we mean by tech-n.iques, ince,although the socialand pol i t ical maneuveringof baboons s complex,they are, as discinct from chimpanzees, br instance,devoid of rools and artifcts, acleast n the wiid.2"V'hac do human collecriveshave that thosesocially complex baboonsdo not possess?Technical msdixli6n-v/hich we are now prepared ro summarize:Technicalacrion isa form of delegation that allows us to mobilize, during inreractions,moves made else-where,earlier,by other acrants. t is the presence fthe past and disrant, the presenceof nonhuman characters,ha t freesus,precisely, rom interactions what we manieodo, right away,with our humble socialskills). That we are noc Machiavellian baboonswe owe to technical action. To say rhis, however,enraiis no Hnmo aber mythology:techniques rovideno sort ofprivi leged, unmediated,unsocial ized ccesso objectivematter and narural forces. Objecrs," "mrter," "force," and "nature" arevery late com-ers and cannot be used as srafting points. The rradirional denition o[ technique as

r ')The above ptrsaa! baboon behavior is bed on conversation dunng l!!{ with Shirley Srrum. Seealso her book, Almost Hutan: A-loarnel into the V'orld of Baboou (New York; Randorn House, 1987); andBruno Latour and Shirley Strum, "Fluman Social Ongins: Plee Tell Us Another OilginStoryl" Jaanal ofBialogicaland SocialStractures (1986):169-87; Shirley Strum and Bruno Latour, "The Meanings ofsocial:From Baboons to Humans," lnfonnation sur les ienrasnciales/SociatSrinrc Inforution ?6 (1987):781-802.The section ofthis art icle t it led Genealogy" is a continuation ofour collaborarive work. Seealso Bijker an dLaw, SbapingTecbnologl-Bailding Society: atow, Vi'Hat'e Net'r Been Modn: MacKenzie, Int'mting Accrracy:Lemonnier, Terh c ogica Choices.


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O N T E C H N I C A L M E D I A T I O N ' 3

the imposirion of a form consciouslyplanned onto shapelessmatter should be replacedby a view of technique-a more accurate rew-i1s the social ization f nonhumans.

The mosr important consequence f criticizing rhe HonoJabermyth is that, whenwe exchangepropertieswith nonhumans through technica.l elegation,we enter intoa complexrransaction hat pertains o "modern" as wel l as tradit ional col lectives. fanyrhing, he moderncol lective s that in which the relations f humanandnonhumanare so intimate, the transactionsso many, the mediations so convoluted, that there isno plausible ensen which art i fct.corporate ody,and subiectcan bedist inguished.In order to take account o[ this symmetry between humans and nonhumans, on theonehand,and his continuity between radit ionaland moderncol lecrives, n the other,social l-reorymust be somewhatmodif ied. t is a commonplace,n cri t ical theory, osay rhar rechniquesare social because hey have been socially constructed.But thispronouncement s vacuous f chemeaning of nediationand socia/ re not made precise.To say that social relations are "inscribed" in technology,such that when we are con-fronred with an arrifact, we are confronted, n effect,with socialrelations, s to asserta tautology,a very implausible one. If art i factsare soci ir l elat ions, hen wlry mustsocietywork through hem to inscribe rself in sonething else?Zhy ot inscribe tselfdirectly, since he art i factscount for nochingi 'By working through the medir"rm farri facts,domrnation and exclusionhide themselves nder the guise of natural andobjectiveForces:ri t ical theory hus deploysa taurology-social relations renothingbut social elations-t l .ren i t ad ds o i t a conspiracyheory-society is hiding behindthe fetishof techniques.

But techniques renot fet ishes, hey are unpredicrable, ot meansbut mediators,means nd endsat rhe same ime; and hat is why t lr eybearon the social abric.Cri t icaltheory s unable o explain rvhy art i fctsenter he streamofour relations,why we soconstantly ecruicand social ize onhumans. t is noc o mirror, inscribe, r hide socialrelations, but to remake hem through ireshand unexpectedsources fpower. Societyis not stable nough o inscribe tself n anything.On the contrary,most of the featuresof what we mean by socialorder-scale, symmetry, urabi l i ty,power,hierarchy, hedistribution of roles-are impossible ven o definewithout recruit ingsocial ized on-humans. 'es,society s construcred, ut not socia//1onstructed. nly cheMachi irvel-l ian baboon, he Kubrick ape,constructs rs sociery ocial ly.Humans, for mil l ions ofyears,haveextended heir social elations o other actants vith which, with whom,rhey haveswappedmany properties,and with "vhich,with v'hom, tl'rey orm cr.t/l*'it'es.

But is symmetrybetweenhtimansand nonhumans eal lypossiblei ' o not humansalrvays ave l-renicizrrrvei 'This ommonsensebjecric,ns nor comnronsensical.incein mostof our activir ieswe do not attribute a causativeole to humans.Scientisrs,orinstance, ike to claim that the y do not speak, hat naturespreaksor, more precisely,wrires) hrougl-rl-remedium of the aborarory nd rs nstruments. t is real i ty, n otherwords, hat doesmost of the talking. We find the same onundrum n poli t ical theory


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5 4 C O M M O N K N O \ T L E D G E

(Hobbes's overeign cts,but the Peoplewrite the scripr)and aiso n l ict ion (novel istslike to say hey are orced o write by the Muse or by rhe sheer mpulse of their charac-ters),while many historiansand critics appeal o still anothercollective orce or whichnovel istsplay the expressiveole of m edium, thar of societyor rhar of zeitgeist.Asecondglancet any acrjviry undermines he easy, ommonsensedea that humansspeakand act. Everyacriviry mplies the principle of symmetry betweenhumansandnonhumansor , at the least,offers a contradictory myrhology that disputes he uniqueposit ion of humans.The sameuncertaintybedevi ls echniques,which arehuman ac-t ions that end up being actionsof nonhumans.Responsibi l i ty or acrion must beshared,symmetry restored, nd hr.rmanity edescribed: ot as rhe sole ranscendentcause, ut as he mediaringmediator.A detai ledcase tudy ofsociotechnical etworksought to fol low ar rhis juncture,butmany suchstudieshavealreadybeenwritten, and most have ai led o make heir newsocial heory felt. Thesestudies rreunderscood y reirders scatalogueexamplesof tl-re"social onstruction" ftechnology.Readers ccounr br cheevidencemustered n themwith referenceo the dual istparadigm hat the studies hemselvesend to undermine.The obstinatedevotion o "socialconstruction"asan explanatory eviceseems o de-rive from the diff iculty of disenrangl ing he variousmeaningsof the catchrvord otia-technical.(/hat needs o be done. then, is to peel away,one by one, rhe liryersof mean-ing and attempc a genealogyof their associations. oreover,having disputed thedualist paradigm for years, havecome to realize hat no one is prepared o abandonan arbitrarybut usefuldichoromy, uchas har betrveen ocietyand technology,I i t isnot replaced y categorieshat haveart earsthe samediscriminatingpoweras he onejett isoned. Wecan coss round rhe phrase sociotechnical erworks" oreverwithoutmoving beyond the dualist paradigm that we wish to overcome.To move Forward,must convince ou that one can discriminatemuch frnerdetai isusing the new para-digm, which blurs the dist inction betweensocialacrors nd objecrs. his in rurn re-quires ha t I begin iom the mosrconcemporarl 'meirningsnd movedown ro rhe mosrprimit ive. Eacl-r eaningcould be loosely el inedurs ociorechnical,ur rhe novelty sthat I wi l l be able n the future to qual i fy with someprecisionwhich sorrof propert iesareswapped r inventedat each evelof meaning.

For my present torn I have solated leven ist incr ayers.Ofcourse, do not claimfor thesedefini t ions,nor lbr rheir sequence, ny plausrbit i ty. siniply rvanr o showthat the tyrannyof the dichoton-ry etweenhumansand nonhumans s not inevitable,since t is possible o envisionanothermyrh in which it plays no role. If I succeednopeningsomespaceor the imagination, hen we arenot forever tuckwith the boringirl ternationof humirns o nonhumans,and back. Ir should be possible o rnraarnespace, hat could be studied emrirical ly,n which we could obsen,e hesrvapping ipropert ieswithor.rc aving to st art from a priori definicions f humanirl , ' .


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O N T E C H N I C A L M E D I A T ] O N ' '

Polirica/ Ecologl' Letel 1 1)

The eleventh interpretation of the crossovsl-1hs swapping of properties-betweenhumansandnonhumans s rhesimpiest o de6nebecauset is he most i teral.Lawyers,acrivists, cologisrs, usinessmen,ol i t ical phi losophers re now seriously alking, inthe contextofour ecological risis,ofgranting to nonhumans omesoft ofrights andevensranding n court .Not somany years go,contemplting he sky meant hinkingof matrer,of of nature.Thesedays,we look up at a sociopol i t icalmbrogl io, since hedepletion ofthe ozone ayer brings together a scientilic controversy, PolicicaldisputeberweenNort l -randSouth,and nrmense trategic hanlesn industry.Pol i t ical repre-senrarion f nonhumans eems ot only plausiblenow,but necessafy'hen the notionwould have seemed udicrous or indecencno t long ago. We used to deride primitivepeopleswho imagined hat a disorder n society, Pol lurion,could hreaten be naturalofder. \tre no longler augh so heartily, as we abstain from using aerosols br fear thesky may fall on our heads.Like the primitives, we fearrhe pollution caused y our neg-Iigence.

As with al1crossovers, l l exchanges,his one mixes elementsof both sides, hepol i t ical with the scienti l icand technological n this case, nd chemixing is not ahapharzardearrangement.Technologies ave aught us how to managevast rssembliesof nonhumans; ur newest ociotechnical ybrid brings what we have hu s learned obearon the pol i t ical system.The new hybrid remainsa nonhuman,but not only hasir lost i ts materialand objectivecharacter,t hasacquiredpropert ies [ ci t izenship. thas, or instance, he right no t to be enslaved.This first layerof meaning-rhe last nchronological eqLrences as1iy6-i5 thacof pol i t ical ecologyor, to useMichel Serres'rernt, "the naturerl ontract.":rSfle ave i teral ly,not symbolical ly sbefore, o managethe planetwe inhabit, and must now de{inea po l i t ics of things.

TechnologiesLeael 10 )

Tlk oia crossover etween echnologyand pol i t ics doesnot, in the presentmyth (orpragmarogony),ndicatebel ief n rhe disrinctionbetween material ealm rnda socialone. am simply unpacking he eievenrh ayerofwhat is packed n the definirionsofsociery nd rechnique. f I descendo the renth ayer, see hat our del ini t ion of tech-nologv is i tself due ro rhe crossover etweena previousdel ini t ion of societyand aparricular version of what a nonhuman can be. To illustrate: some time alo'at theInsti tut Pasteur, scientist ntroduced himself, "Hi, I am the coordinacor f yeastchromosome 1 The hybrid whosehand I shookwars, l l ar once,a pefson he cal led

. ,NI ichel Serres. Lt (ottrtrt i l t t i l r t ' l lPi t t ts. Bour in, L99t)); MichrI Serres, Echircrss, tn. 'n ls: atuq t i l t tL t t i i ls nlelBr tut Latow (Par is: Bour in, I 992).


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'6 COMMON KNOWLEDGE

himself "I"), a corporatebody ("the coordinator"), and a natural phenomenon(rhe ge-nome, the DNA sequence, f yeast).The dualist paradigm will not aid in understand-ing this hybrid. Place ts social aspecton one side, and yeast DNA on the other, andyou will bungle not only the data but also the opportuniry to grasp how a genomebecomesknown to an organizattonand how an organization s naturalized n a DNAsequence n a hard disk.'Weagainencountera crossover ere, but it is of a different sort and goes n a differ-en t direction, although it could also be called sociotechnical.For the scientist inter-viewed, there is no question ofgranting any sorr ofrights, ofcitizenship, ro yeasr.Forhim, yeast s a strictly material entity. Still, the industrial laboratory where he worksis a place n which new modesof organizationof labor elicit completely new featuresin nonhumans.Yeasthas beenpu t to work for millennia, of course, or instance n theold brewing industry, but now it works for a network of thirty European aborarorieswhere its genome s mapped, humanized, and socialized,as a code, a book, a programof action, compatible with our ways of coding, counring, and reading, reraining littleof its material quality. Ic is absorbed nto the collectrve.Through technology-de-fined, in the anglophonesense, s a fusion of science, rganizarion,and industry-rheforms of coordination learned hrough "networks of power" (seebelow) are extendedto disarticulate entities. Nonhumans are endowed with speech,however primirive,with intelligence, foresight, self-control, and discipline, in a fashion both large-scaleand intimate. Social-nesss sharedwith nonhumans in an almost promiscuous way.\7hi1e n this model (the tenth meaning of sociotechnical),utomata have no rights,they are much more than material entities; rhey arecomplex organizations.

I'Jetu,orksof Pourcr (Leael 9)Organizations, however, are not purely social, because hey themselves ecapitulatenine prior crossovers f humansand nonhumans.Alfred Chandlerand Thomas Hugheshave each raced he interpenetration of rechnical and social actors n whar Chandlerterms he "global corporation"and Hughes erms "networksof power."tt Here again,the phrase sociotechnicalmbrogl io" would be apt, and one could replace he dual istparadigm by the "seamless eb" oftechnicai and social actorsso beautifuliy deployedby Hughes.But the point of my i i t t le genealogys also o identi fy, nside he seamiessweb, propertiesborrowed from the socialworld in order to socilizenonhumans,and,vice versa,borrowed from nonhumans in order to naturalize and expand rhe socialrealm. For each ayer o[meaning, whatever happenshappensas f rve rvere earning, in

lAlfred D. C.han,ler,Sale and Scope: he Dlnantit of lrstrial Cafutali.rn (Cambrige: Harvard Univer-sity Press, 1990); Tliomas P Hughes, Ne/a'arh: af Pou,er:EtectrtcStppll Syrteru n the US. Ergland and Gemtanl.l88L) 1930 (Ba l t imore:JohnsHopkins Un ivers i ty Press, 98l ) .


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Stateof socialCrossover

Societyof nonhumans,automatons,machinesBuilding large-scaleorganizationswith nonhumans

Nonhumansas organizationsReshufllingof intimatepropertiesNonhumanswith rights

Politics of things

O N T E C H N I C A L M E D I A T I O N ' 1

Stateof nonhumanrelations

Industry8th

TechnologieslOrh

Megamachine7rh

NetworksofPower9rh

PoliticalecologJI lrh

Fig.7. Five SuccessiveMeaning of Sociotechnical

conract with one side, ontological properties that are then reimported to the otherside,generating new, completely unexpectedeffects Fig. 7) '

The extensionof networks of power in the electrical ndustry, in teiecommunica-t ions, in transportation, s impossible o imagine without a massivemobil ization ofmaterial entities. Hughes's book is exemplary fo r students of technology because tshowshow a technical nvention electrical ighting) led to the establ ishmentby Edi-son) ofa cofporation ofunprecedented scale, ts scopedirectly related to the physicalproperries [electrical networks.Noc that Hughes n any way talks of infrastructuretriggering changes n superstructure;on the contrary his networks ofpowerare com-plete hybrids, hough hybrids of a pecul iar5q11-6hsy end rheir nonhumanqual i t iesto what were until then weak, local, and scatteredcorporatebodies. Management oflargemasses f electrons, l ients,power stations, ubsidiaries, eters, nddispatchingrooms acquires he formal ancluniversal characterof scientilic laws.

This nrnrh eyer f mean ing esembleshe e leven th , i th wh ichwe began, i nce nboth cases he crossovers from nonhumans to cofporate bodres. $Uhat can be donewith electrons anbe done with electors.) ut the int imacy o[human and nonhumanis lessapparenr n networksofpower than in pol i t ical ecology Edison,Bel l , and Fordmobil ized enri t ies hat looked ike matter, that seemednonsocial,whereas ol i t icalecology nvolves he fte ofnonhumansalready ocial ized, o closely elated o us thatthey have o be protectedby del ineationoftheir iegal rights.

lndrstry (Let'el 8)

Evenphi losophers nd sociologists f techniques end to imagine hat there s no dif-I iculty n definingmaterialenti t iesbecausehey areobiective, nproblematical ly om-


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'8 COM, ION KNOITLEDGE

posedo[forces, lements, toms.Only the social, he human realm s diff iculr ro rncer-pret, we often bel ieve,becarrset is complexly historical.But wheneverwe talk o[matter, we are really considering, as I am trying to show here, a packageof formercrossoverserween ocialand naturalelements, o that what we take to be primit iveand pure terms are belatedand mixed ones.Already we haveseen hat ma tter variesgrearly rom layer o lyer-matter in the layer havecal led pol i t icalecology" i f fersfrom thirt in the layers curlled technology" and "networks of power." Far from beingprimit ive, immutable,and ahiscorical, atter hasa complexgenealogy.

The extraordinary feat of what I will call industrl is to extend to matter a furtherproperty hat u'e hink ofas exclusively ocial, he capacity o relate o othersofone'skind. Nonhumanshave his capacitywhen part of the assembly f actants hat we cal la machine: n automaton ndowedwith autonomyof some ortand submitred o regu-lar laws hat canbe measured ,ich nstruments nd 2lccounting rocedures. rom toolsheld in rhe handsof human workers, he shift historical lywas to assemblies [ ma-chines, where tools re/ate o ltte an0tber, reating a massivearray o[ labor and materialrelat ions n fact orieshat Marx described ssomany circles [hel l . The paradox f thisstageof relationsbetweenhumansand nonhumans s that i t hasbeen ermed"arl ien-arion." dehunranization, s if i t were the rst t ime thirt poor and exploited humanweaknesswas confrontedwith an all-powerful objective force.However, to relate non-humans cogether n an assembly f machines, uled by laws, and accounted or byinstruments, s o grant them a sortofsocial i fe. Indeed, he modernistproiectconsrstsin creating hat pecul iarhybrid: a abricated onhuman ha t hasnothing ofthe char ac-ter of societyand pol i t ics yer bui lds the body pol i t ic al l the more effectively ecauseit seems ompletely'estrangediom hr.rmanity,ri his famousshapeless atter, cele-braredso ervently hroughour he eighteenthand nineteenth enturies,which is therefor Man's-but not \foman'5-ing66uity to mould and fashion, s only one of manyways ro socializenonhumans. They have been socialized o sucl-r n extent that theynow have he capacityofcreating an assembly ftheir own, an automaton, heckingand sun'eying,pushing and trigeering other automata, rs f with ful l autononry. he"megztmachine'seebelow)hirsbeenextended o nonhumans.

It is only becausewe have not undertaken an irnthropology of our modern worldthat v"'e an overlook he strzrnge nd hybrid qual i ty of matter as t is seized n andimplementedby industry. Wetakematter asmechanistic,orgett ing hat mechanismis one-half he modern defini t ion of society.A societvo[ machinesi ' es, he eighthmeaning of the word socioterhnical,l-ror-rght seems o designatean unproblemtic in -dustri , ,dominating mtrrrer hroug h machinerl ' , s rl"re trangest ociotechnicalmbro-gl io. Ir{atcers not a given, but a recenthistoricalcre.rcion.

l lrrour, VL Htrc Nettr Ber i)[olut.


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O N T E C H N I C A L M E D ] A T I O N ' 9

The Meganacbine (Lu,el7 )But where does ndustry come fromi'/ t is neither a given nor the sudden discoverybycapital ismof the objective awsof matter. Wehave o imagine ts genealogy hroughearlier and more primitive meanings of the term socitttechnical.ewis Mumford hasmade che ntriguing suggestion hat the negannchine-the organizationof largenum-bers of humansvia chainsof command, del iberate lanning, and accountingproce-dures-represents a changeof scale ha t had to be made beforewheelsand gearscouldbe developed.riAt somepoint in history,human interactions ome to be mediatedthrough a large srrati l ied,external ized ody pol i t ic that keeps rack, employing arangeof"intel lectual echniques" writ ing and counting,basicai ly), f the many nestedsubprograms f action.By replrrcing ome. hough not al l , o[thesesubprogrirms ithnonhumans,macl-rinerynd factories reborn.Tl 'renonhumans, n this view, enteranorganization hat is already n placeand take on a role rehearsedor centuriesby obedi-enr human servants nrol led n the imperia l megamachine.

In this seventh pisode, he massof nonhuman s rssembledn cit iesby irn nternal-izedecology-I wi l l del ine his expression hort ly-6ut beenbrought to bearon em-pire bui lding. Mr.rmford's ypothesis s debatable, o say he least.when our contextofdiscussion s the history oitechnology; but the hypothesismakesexcel lent ensenthe context of my genealogy.Before it is possible to delegate action to nonhumans,and possible o r elte nonhumns o one i lnother n rrn automaton, t must { irst bepossible o nest a rane f subprograms or action into one irnotherwithout losingtrack of them. Management, Mumford would say,precedes he expansionof materialtechniques.More in keepingwith the logic of my stor) ' , ne might say hacwheneverwe learn somethingabout the managementof humans,we shift that knowledge ononhumansand endow them witl-r more and more organizatronalproperties.The even-numberedepisodes have ecoun ted o ar iol low this pattern: ndustryshifts ro non-humans he manirgement ipeople learned n t he in'rperialmachine,much as echnol-ogies shift to nonhumans the large-scalemanagement learned through networks ofpower. In tl-re dd-numbered episodes, he oppositeprocess s at work: what l-ras eenlearned rom nonhumans s reimported so as o reconfigurepeople.

Internalized Ecoktgy(Let'el 6)

In the context of layer seven. he megamachine seemsa pure irnd even linal form,comprisedentirel) ' of social relat ions;but, zrswe reach ayer six and examinewhatunderl ies he megamachine, e l ind the most extraordinary xtension f social ela-

' 'Lewis NlumlbrJ . ' l ' lx )ly tb rl r , t . \lath *: [i L ,t r; t t rt , /Hurt i. t Drr t l[nrfrl (Nc w Vrrk: Harcourr, Brace \!(orld. I 966).


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60 coMMoN KNo\TLEDGE

tions to nonhumans: gricultureand the domestication f animals.The intense ocial-rzation, reeducation,and reconfigurationof plants and animal5-56 in16n5ghat theychangeshape, unction, and often genetic makeup-is what I mean by the term inter-nalizedecology.s with our other even-numbered episodes,domestication cannot bedescribedas a sudden access o an objective material realm that exisrs beyond thesocial. n order o enrol l animals,plants,proteins n the emergingcol lective, nemustfirst endow them with the social characreristics ecessary or their integration. Thisshift of characteristics esults n a man-made andscape or society(viliagesand cities)that completelyalterswhat was unti l then meant by socialand material i

Latour - On Techniques

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