17.171 a philosophy of tools

From: Humanist Discussion Group (by way of Willard McCarty willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk)
Date: Tue Jul 29 2003 - 01:21:30 EDT

  • Next message: Humanist Discussion Group (by way of Willard McCarty

                   Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 17, No. 171.
           Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
                       www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
                            www.princeton.edu/humanist/
                         Submit to: humanist@princeton.edu

             Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2003 06:17:26 +0100
             From: galloway@ischool.utexas.edu
             Subject: re 17.163 a philosophy of tools

    Willard,
    Heidegger has interesting things to say about "equipment," but
    "actor-network theory" is especially very relevant here: it includes
    objects as "actants" (bearing "captured agency" per Andrew Pickering) in a
    network of signification. Major players are Latour, Law, Callon. There has
    been a huge discussion in the social studies of science and technology
    literature about the theory-ladenness of tools ever since (most famously)
    Latour & Woolgar's Laboratory Life outed the implications of their
    construction.
    Pat Galloway
    University of Texas-Austin



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Tue Jul 29 2003 - 01:25:23 EDT