Technology and the Theory of Distributed Agency
摘要
Chapter 7 emphasizes the pragmatic aspect of doing technology besides interpretations of technology as a material artifact or a cultural scheme. The author argues that modern technology gains a new quality through its performance as “agents” and the interactive coupling in hybrid constellations of “distributed agency” across people, machines, and programs. Cooperating robots, multi-agent systems, and networked heterogeneous systems of flight are used to demonstrate how technology can be observed and interpreted (1) as technology in “action” vis-à-vis the environment, (2) as in “intra-action” with other technical elements, and (3) as in “interactivity” with personal and social systems. The theory of distributed agency is outlined in contrast to Günter Ropohl’s or Mario Bunge’s concepts of “action systems” and Bruno Latour’s political philosophy of “actor-networks”. It assumes that action and technology each emerge in shared contexts in medias res; that technization is a projected scheme of effective relations that can be formed and consolidated in different media (humans, things, signs); and that advanced digital technologies will be characterized by increasing complexity caused by heterogeneous agencies and looser coupling through flexible forms of interactivity.