ANT, mediators, etc..

I'm really interested in Langlois' application of ANT to the technological relationships on the Web.  I like how ANT avoids a straight ahead social analysis which designates the social processes that form technology.  In this sense, there is not one, specified social domain which can be called upon to demonstrate the, "social factors" or "social forces" that explain the "non- social" entity of technology.  Instead, ANT prevents the predetermined split of what is social and non-social, and allows for an analysis of the ever-shifting associations among assemblages of elements in order to end with an understanding of the "movement" not the "domain" of what is being made "social."

Langlois demonstrates this technique by attending directly to the actors themselves about where these associations and assemblages exist.  He allows the technological processes to unfold as non-human actors and, therefore, as active participants in the configuration of assemblages of meaning--as participating in the modification of a given state of affairs.  I don't think that in doing so he is creating a relationship of symmetry between human users and non-human software processes.  However, I am not sure exactly how these two actors exist in relation to each other--if they are on the same plane of agency, or if one is considered more active than the other.  Langlois determines that, "one has to acknowledge the omnipresence of software as a technical mediator of user-produced and commercial produced content and as an active participant in the production of meanings" (123).  This could be interpreted as an emphasis on the agency of software over that of the human user in terms of software's capacity to be a "technical mediator."

I do think that the ANT idea of "mediator"  fits perfectly with the two software processes that Langlois discusses in his case studies.  Mediators have the capacity to transform the meaning of the elements they carry, as opposed to just acting as vessels of material transmission.  In this sense, the input is never indicative of the output and there is a constant, "technocultural shaping of user's perception of the meanings that are offered to them" (124).  Because books are mediated on amazon.com into digitally based texts, their information is inevitably modified, as the software does not act as a direct translator of information from one mode to another, but as a mediator of underlying processes of expression and content.  I think that this analysis successfully portrays the software systems in these case studies as simultaneously producing and being produced by cultural practices and, therefore, redefines the process of meaning production as a "technocultural" movement (2).