ANT, complexity and systems
development
Eric Monteiro
NTNU and Univ. of Oslo
IN364 March 2003
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Contents
• ”Organizational issues” – where are they?
• ANT – notions, illustrations – and critique
• Key lessons and issues
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”Implementation”
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•
Specified
•
Coded
•
Tested
•
Prototyped
•
A few users
•
Pockets of use, ad hoc
•
Everyone using it
•
Everyone, for important things
IN 364.v2003.ppt, 29.05.2016
”Using an IS”
• Seen it
• Touched it
• Occasionally
• For selected tasks, not for everything
• Often
• routinely
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Examples
”Two and a half million Norwegians use the Internet every month”
(Gallup, November 2002)
ATM - - Cinema - - Flight check in - - c2b - - …
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Organizational politics
• groups
• Agendas
• Interests
• Conflict, not harmony, is the rule
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Interpretative flexibility
M
8-9
9 - 10
10 - 11
11 - 12
12 - 13
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Tue
W
Th
F
Ex.:
GP
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prescription
pharmacy
Ex.:
GP
pharmacy
prescription
identifier
logisitics
NMD
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ANT: Basic moves
• Our world is full of technology
• The end, not the means
• Same role => same explanation
• Reductionist? Vulgar? Anti-humanistic?
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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
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Inscriptions
• WHO inscribes
• WHAT is inscribed (which scenario)
• HOW is it inscribed (the material)
• STRENGTH of an inscription - does it succeed?
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”Benefits” – for whom??
• Calenders…..
• Benefits = those CALLING meetings
• Additional work = those BEING called
• Ex.: Internet banking ?
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Individual  cooperative work
• Lotus Notes in Alfa Corporation
• ”sharing experience” – projects, customers
• (implicit) structures of incentives
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Ex.: Lotus Notes in Statoil (1992- )
20.000
10.000
5.000
1994
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1996
1998
Ex.: Lotus Notes in Statoil
Norne
ISO 9000
$
Olje
1994
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1996
1998
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
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QWERTY
QWERTYUIOPÅ
ASDFGHJKLØÆ
ZXCVBNM
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Standardization (I)
• Imposed - emergent ?
– Ex.: ISO vs. Internet
• Irreversibility?
– Ex.: QWERTY
• Key dilemma:
Keep stable
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Change
Problem areas
• ”Actant”
• Only micro studies
• ”Flat” actors
• Centered, drifting
• A grand theory of everything
• Design = intervention, not from scratch
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Purity and danger
• strong, rhetorical device!
• socially constructed (M Douglas)
• danger = impurity = fragmentation
• ”Infrastructures are clean - tidy, uniform”
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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)
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Actant
• Just a fake? A play with words?
• Who interpretes the actants?
• Reasonable interpretations
• Unsolvable problem!
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Only micro?
• what about larger structures
• Institutions?
• ”move up and down!” (Callon, Latour 1986)
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Flat actors
• Goal directed
• Machiavelli
• No soul
• Symbolic aspects
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Centered
• Goal oriented
• Managerialism
• No drifting
• A mastermind, an origo
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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)
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Design
• Till now - networks from scratch
• Infrastructure
• Gradual change of networks
• Polyvalent networks
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