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1IN 364.v2003.ppt, 19.04.23
ANT, complexity and systems development
Eric Monteiro
NTNU and Univ. of Oslo
IN364 March 2003
2IN 364.v2003.ppt, 19.04.23
Contents
• ”Organizational issues” – where are they?
• ANT – notions, illustrations – and critique
• Key lessons and issues
3IN 364.v2003.ppt, 19.04.23
”Implementation”
• Specified
• Coded
• Tested
• Prototyped
• A few users
• Pockets of use, ad hoc
• Everyone using it
• Everyone, for important things
4IN 364.v2003.ppt, 19.04.23
”Using an IS”
• Seen it
• Touched it
• Occasionally
• For selected tasks, not for everything
• Often
• routinely
5IN 364.v2003.ppt, 19.04.23
Examples
”Two and a half million Norwegians use the Internet every month”(Gallup, November 2002)
ATM - - Cinema - - Flight check in - - c2b - - …
6IN 364.v2003.ppt, 19.04.23
Organizational politics
• groups
• Agendas
• Interests
• Conflict, not harmony, is the rule
7IN 364.v2003.ppt, 19.04.23
Interpretative flexibility
M Tue W Th F
8 - 9
9 - 10
10 - 11
11 - 12
12 - 13
10IN 364.v2003.ppt, 19.04.23
ANT: Basic moves
• Our world is full of technology
• The end, not the means
• Same role => same explanation
• Reductionist? Vulgar? Anti-humanistic?
11IN 364.v2003.ppt, 19.04.23
Appropriating ANT
• Social science => ICT– A GENUINE interest in the technology
• Backward gazing => design– Only after the dust has settled...
• Details => basic notions– Unstable, keeps changing
12IN 364.v2003.ppt, 19.04.23
Inscriptions
• WHO inscribes
• WHAT is inscribed (which scenario)
• HOW is it inscribed (the material)
• STRENGTH of an inscription - does it succeed?
13IN 364.v2003.ppt, 19.04.23
”Benefits” – for whom??
• Calenders…..
• Benefits = those CALLING meetings
• Additional work = those BEING called
• Ex.: Internet banking ?
14IN 364.v2003.ppt, 19.04.23
Individual cooperative work
• Lotus Notes in Alfa Corporation
• ”sharing experience” – projects, customers
• (implicit) structures of incentives
15IN 364.v2003.ppt, 19.04.23
Ex.: Lotus Notes in Statoil (1992- )
1994 1996 1998
20.000
10.000
5.000
17IN 364.v2003.ppt, 19.04.23
Irreversibility
• Irreversibilitet - measuring how well-aligned
the actor-network is– How difficult it is to undo an earlier inscription
– To what extent future action is determined
19IN 364.v2003.ppt, 19.04.23
Standardization (I)
• Imposed - emergent ?– Ex.: ISO vs. Internet
• Irreversibility?– Ex.: QWERTY
• Key dilemma:
Keep stable Change
20IN 364.v2003.ppt, 19.04.23
Problem areas
• ”Actant”
• Only micro studies
• ”Flat” actors
• Centered, drifting
• A grand theory of everything
• Design = intervention, not from scratch
21IN 364.v2003.ppt, 19.04.23
Purity and danger
• strong, rhetorical device!
• socially constructed (M Douglas)
• danger = impurity = fragmentation
• ”Infrastructures are clean - tidy, uniform”
22IN 364.v2003.ppt, 19.04.23
Fragmentation = dirt
“[W]e risk that the company’s information and access get fragmented (...) The Intranet market is highly fragmented today, with a number of strong competitors fighting each other with technological as well as political means. (...) For the non-specialist, this creates the impression that Intranet technology is cheap, but it is of key importance to recognise that the Intranet technology of today has it price — they require an effort to be integrated with the existing infrastructure of the company”((SData K/RD21, IT challenges and trends 1996 - 1999)
23IN 364.v2003.ppt, 19.04.23
Actant
• Just a fake? A play with words?
• Who interpretes the actants?
• Reasonable interpretations
• Unsolvable problem!
24IN 364.v2003.ppt, 19.04.23
Only micro?
• what about larger structures
• Institutions?
• ”move up and down!” (Callon, Latour 1986)
26IN 364.v2003.ppt, 19.04.23
Centered
• Goal oriented
• Managerialism
• No drifting
• A mastermind, an origo
27IN 364.v2003.ppt, 19.04.23
Grand theory of everything
• what is NOT an actor-network?– None talks about boudaries - do they exist?
• The neverending networks– The world in your lap
– How to delimit them
– Methodological issues
• ”There is never only one network” (Leigh Star)