Mixed Semiotics 2.0

Langlois outlines a compelling argument by showing "the many layers of software that are needed, from transmission protocols to computer languages and programs, to transform data into signs" and integrating these layers into actor-network theory (9). In particular, I found her evidence of Amazon's (many, many!) "software actors" demonstrating their "space of agency" powerful and interesting (46). Her application of ANT seemed especially strong in showing the superiority of using a combination of human and computer choices to construct Amazon's recommendations. I was glad to see the point made--though in a pretty dilute form--that Web 2.0 software, structures, and websites, tend to follow a simple tenet: "You (the user[s]) make the content. We get the money."

Also, though she doesn't depend too much on medium theory, she does define a medium as "a communication system...that...creates new social environments and is thus active in bringing social change," (27). I can see the connection between the implementation of the MediaWiki format and changes in the way encyclopedic knowledge is conceptualized, but elaboration on the transformation of consumerism with regard to Amazon's interpellation of customers and their desires was missing, I think.

In her discussion of the MediaWiki suite, I thought the "credentials" was underdeveloped--who has the expertise among Wikipedia users to be an administrator? Why? And does this structure reproduce problematic hierarchies from non-open-source bodies of knowledge that Wikipedia attempts to supersede? In a chapter that relies so much on Latour and STS scholars, a mention of partial perspectives might have shored up Wikipedia's credibility a bit.

(A very small side note: I found it funny when, at certain points in the text, levels of signification and resignification, and structures of control and power, made themselves apparent where Langlois made typos.)

(Another small side note: Langlois claims that "dynamic content production makes it possible for technical actors to be included at both the levels of content and expression in ways that were not possible before [MediaWiki systems]" (208). Are blogs not considered "dynamic" enough to have preceded wikis in this form of editability?)