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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”

• Specified

• Coded

• Tested

• Prototyped

• A few users

• Pockets of use, ad hoc

• Everyone using it

• Everyone, for important things

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”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 Tue W Th F

8 - 9

9 - 10

10 - 11

11 - 12

12 - 13

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Ex.:

GP pharmacyprescription

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Ex.:

NMD

identifier

logisitics

GP pharmacyprescription

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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- )

1994 1996 1998

20.000

10.000

5.000

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Ex.: Lotus Notes in Statoil

$Olje

ISO 9000

Norne

1994 1996 1998

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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

Q W E R T Y U I O P Å A S D F G H J K L Ø Æ Z X C V B N M

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Standardization (I)

• Imposed - emergent ?– Ex.: ISO vs. Internet

• Irreversibility?– Ex.: QWERTY

• Key dilemma:

Keep stable Change

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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