The Re-Distribution of Power in Digital Constellations
摘要
Chapter 13 presents the results and experiences of three decades of interdisciplinary research on the development of computing and AI-technologies. The examples range from the micro level of human-computer interaction to the macro level of social conflict arenas. The author explores the changing forms of technology figurations and sociotechnical constellations under the aspect how the power to shape them is repeatedly distributed in new and different ways. For this purpose, influences of social actors like pioneers, developers, entrepreneurs, and regulators are identified as well as collective and institutional forces emanating from organizations, user groups, and cultures of practice. In the next step the familiar sociological concept of distribution of individual action and institutional agency is merged with the new technological approach of distributing operations in parallel in mainframe computers and later in systems of Distributed Artificial Intelligence. The ‘socionic’ perspective and the social pragmatist view on distributed agency originated out of this merger.