Networks and Actors

So one of the hard parts of ANT is just how slow it is. By Latour's definition, there are five major uncertainties that exist for the social sciences. They are (From Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory):

• The nature of groups: there exist many contradictory ways for actors to be given an identity.
  
  
• The nature of actions: in each course of action a great variety of agents seem to barge in and displace the original groups.
  
  
• The nature of objects: the type of agencies participating in interaction seems to remain wide open.
  
  
• The nature of facts: the links of natural sciences with the rest of society seems to be the source of continuous disputes.
  
  
• and, finally, about the type of studies done under the label of a science of the social as it is never clear in which precise sense social sciences can be said to be empirical.
  

Latour goes on to talk about ANT users of being mostly impaitient. It is as if people cannot use the theory given the do-it-right-now-or-miss-it mentality of Sociology right now. I think, and I say I think as there's not enough smarts in this head of mine to really know this stuff this quickly, that he's telling us all to slow down; to give up on our competing definitions of the word social. He says:

The argument of this book can be stated very simply: when social scientists add the adjective 'social' to some phenomenon, they designate a stabilized state  of affairs, a bundle of ties that, later, may be mobilized to account for some other phenomenon. There is nothing wrong with this use of the word as long as it designates what is already assembled together, without making any superfluous assumptions about the nature of what is assembled. Problems arise, however, when 'social' begins to mean a type of material, as if the adjective was roughly comparable to other terms like 'wooden' 'steely' 'biological' 'economical' 'mental' 'organizational' or 'linguistic'. At that point, the meaning of the word breaks down since it now designates two entirely different things: first, a movement during a process of assembling; and second, a specific type of ingredient that is supposed to differ from other materials. 

What I want to do is the present work is to show why the social cannot be construed as a kind of material or domain and to dispute the current project of providing 'a social explanation' or some other state of affairs. Although this earlier project has been productive and probably necessary in the past, it has largely stopped being so thanks, in part, to the success of the social sciences. At the present stage of their development, it's no longer possible to inspect the precise ingredients that are entering into the composition of the social domain. What I want to do is to redefine the notion of social by going back to its original meaning and making it able to trace connections again. Then it will be possible to resume the traditional goal of the social sciences but with tools better adjusted to the task. After having done extensive work on the 'assemblages' of nature, I believe it's necessary to scrutinize more thoroughly the exact content of what is 'assembled' under the umbrella of a society. This seems to be the only way to remain faithful to the old duties of sociology, this 'science of living together.'

He goes on to say, much later:

Sociologists of the social seem to glide like angels, transporting power and connections almost immaterially, while the ANT-scholar has to trudge like an ant, carrying the heavy gear in order to geneerate even the tiniest connection. 

So I think now about an item I was tested on: Seamless web. I thought I understood the term but I think now that I didn't until I read more.

I had thought about doing something involving gaming. I have been reading a bit too much lately about game design and thought it would fit in well. It is an extremely curious web of things. Let's think about it from my perspective (which is wrong to do but is an excellent blogoxample):

I am a Gamer

I am a Student

I am interested in Sociology

I am conscious of changes in myself and others

I am conscious of my actions

5 Statements, 5 meanings. Now, seamless web. A typical day, I will go to work, go to class, go to a store, and go home. Now, thinking about the 1st and 2nd uncertainty, I have to think of my existance in the student network, the state employee network, the gamer network, the consumer network, and the pedestrian traffic and normal traffic network. 

Perhaps it is wrong for me to call these things networks but as I am starting here and this is an exercise, it will do for now. Now, on a given day I will wake up, take a shower, and head to work. On my way to work, I think of things I need to do: Work, School, After-Work stuff. However, this is where the conflicting nature of groups happen. 

I get a text message on the way to work. A network has imposed it's power on me (power in ANT is something I am just now coming to understand). Suddenly, my plans and actions change to cater to the sender of the text message. Maybe my own actions still exist but the network i've entered now, the network I am an actant in, holds me in and demands certain things of me. I have to comply in order to keep that network going / keep myself in that network. 

Once that action is finished, I reflect on the past actions I had planned. In the course of a day, given the radical tasks I often have to complete, I often only manage to finish one or two things I set out to do. When I go home, those actions or plans I had at the beginning of the day change.

I get home and get another text message about joining someone in a game. Now, Game Space is an interesting thing. McKenzie Wark says of Gamespace:

 Ever get the feeling that life's a game with changing rules and no clear sides, one you are compelled to play yet cannot win? Welcome to gamespace. Gamespace is where and how we live today. It is everywhere and nowhere: the main chance, the best shot, the big leagues, the only game in town. In a world thus configured, McKenzie Wark contends, digital computer games are the emergent cultural form of the times. Where others argue obsessively over violence in games, Wark approaches them as a utopian version of the world in which we actually live. Playing against the machine on a game console, we enjoy the only truly level playing field--where we get ahead on our strengths or not at all.

In essence, if this idea of gamespace stands, the very networks i'm existing in shut off and i'm in a whole new set. I'm essentially shutting off the world i've been living in, with it's own networks and it's own actors, and going into a completely different one with much different networks and much different actors. The thing i'm curious about is, 'does this matter to ANT?' If anything, it is probably just another layer and another network and manages to fit in just fine. Without the actors plugging into the machines that run the game, we wouldn't have that network at all. The network, the Punctualisation happening in that circumstance (the creation of an entity consisting of dozens, hundreds, thousands of seperate networks) is no different than that of an automobile. However, I am part of that network so it is special to me.

Now, i'm rushing this and it's relatively obvious. But for a first example I think I am happy with it. This stuff is hard...this stuff is difficult to think of given that it is forcing me to rethink about the basic nature of things i've been learning for years. It isn't going against theory; it's going against the very nature of the material we use to construct pictures of the world we live in. Going back to Latour's idea of the word social, we have to not use the word as a material, we have to rethink the very idea of social.

This is a bumpy ride, but a good one.