Technology Project

A LAST RESORT: AN ACADEMIC/TECHNOLOGICAL LITERACY AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF FAILURE & FALSEHOODS or HOW I TO STOPPED WIXING AND LEARNED TO ACTOR NETWORK THEORY

The following is a documented meta-crisis of trying to create a Wix site that can help explain my understanding and confusions surrounding Actor Network Theory in tandem with my technological failures.

From the perspective of Actor Network Theory (can a theory have a perspective?), we cannot understand or explain phenomena through pure social constructivism, which would say that things are the way they are because humans have constructed them socially. Nor can we take a pure technological determinism view, saying that the technology can and will overpower humans in a way that complicates human agency. Instead, ANT would argue for a socio-techno view. To do this, there needs to be a radical rethinking of the technological/natural, human/nonhuman, dichotomies that cause us to think (can dichotomies cause us to think?) in terms of separate ontologies. ANT proposes that we think about human and nonhuman on the same ontological plane, meaning that the starting point for understanding a phenomenon is to take the leap that all things/objects/humans/ideas are equally agentive. From there ANT proposes that we trace the networks of an assemblage to see how each actant is an assemblage of other actants that can be traced by a network. The process is never ending, but that is OK because Bruno Latour, one of the key theorists behind ANT, proposes that nothing is reducible to anything else. We cannot, then, trace the origins of any actant, but that should not stop us from trying. It is not post-modernism where there are no real answers. It isn’t modernism where we are marching toward a single truth. It is taking into account the complex network of actants that are present, recognizing that there is something truth-like in the assemblage, and searching for the crossed-out god.

Unpacking this with my experience of attempting to create a website.

I am OK at writing academic papers. I know what to do. I can synthesize ideas and resources to create a somewhat coherent, logical flow of words that has a point. I can think about what I want to say, picture the words laid out in Microsoft Word (I can hear Mellissa asking why I don’t use Google Docs) in my typeface of the year: Estrangelo Edessa. My process for writing is to read as much and think as much as I can within the timeframe allowed, then begin at page one and slowly but steadily plod to the end. More times than not, the result is not bad and the process is somewhat enjoyable.

For a while I have been wanting to have a chance to explore the work of Bruno Latour, being first attracted to something that I picked up from an article from Meg about the nose becoming more nose-like through exposure and attention to different scents. A Pennsylvanian chef’s nose is becoming more of a nose as she travels to Kuala Lumpur and she is exposed to a new type of fungus. A toddler’s nose is becoming more of a nose when he first falls into a pile of raked leaves. A senator’s nose is becoming a nose when she realizes the visiting junior congressman from Alaska has mixed colognes. I started reading what I could of Latour and his theories, and finding a lot of satisfaction in the object-oriented ontological shift necessary to go along with this thinking. I particularly enjoyed the transdisciplinary work of Adam Miller in his book Speculative Grace: Bruno Latour and Object Oriented Theology and also the collection Thinking with Bruno Latour in Rhetoric and Composition. It turns out the idea, though, the nose becoming a nose is more Deleuzian that Latourian in thought, but I was already too long duped give up on Latour now.

Wanting to use ENGL808 with Dr. Pagnucci as an opportunity to explore what Latour and other scholars have to say about an object-oriented ontology in regards to technology, and having never had an experience of creating a website but wanting to stretch my creativity some, I proposed that I create a kind of resource hub that I could keep updated and return to when needed. I was also very interested in exploring a concept from within the concept. An academic paper on objects in tech literacy didn’t seem up to the complex task, like trying to understand a wave by wading in a tide pool. I dove in.

I quickly became frustrated. My creative and perfectionistic impulses bogged me down. I wanted to do something too high-concept for my technical ability.  Latour’s view of technology as a hybridization (that technological innovations over time fade into the background and we become hybridized in that we no longer are able to clearly distinguish natural from technological in our daily life, and that technology reads us and produces new hybrid spaces) was something that I was interested in representing visually as a way to show the connection between the concept and the object. I chose a picture of an August sunrise from the vantage point of a country road in the small town in Indiana where I live and teach. The sun was still behind a silhouetted cluster of trees (a remnant of pre-colonial Indiana where it was said a squirrel could cross from Ohio to Illinois without touching the ground… now a combine can drive the same path without encountering a tree). The sky above the trees, unsure of what to choose, decided to split down the middle into cotton candy pink and cotton candy blue. I stopped my run, quickly took a picture on my phone, and continued on my way past the house with the all-bark and no bite but terrifying anyway dog. I may have looked East toward the sunrise a few more times. I know I looked West toward the dog. I put the picture on Instagram when I got home and seven of my fifteen followers liked it. I don’t think John did because I think he only “likes” things that he really likes.

This picture, now the background to my website, had a piece of me, of home, of my running friends, of my Instagram followers, of a terrifying harmless dog, of pink and blue that weren’t really cotton candy…. I added pink, white, and black text in Spinnaker font (new to me) to the website entitled “Multitudes” because Darius loves it and after the Walt Whitman line “Do I contradict myself/very well, I contradict myself./I am large./I contain multitudes” which I misquoted in class, but Abby didn’t call me out on it although I know she knows I got it wrong. I intentionally chose texts colors that would be obscured, blended, and revealed as the user scrolled the website. The pink words are there, but so is the pink of the sky. Which one are we seeing? Are the letters consumed by the sky because they are smaller? Is this nature and technology hybridizing? Is this really nature? Can computerized alphabetic text still be considered technology? Was Bita able to see my design choices? I wonder what her assessment was.

I soon realized that I was spending too much valuable time on the learning curve of creating a website. I have a Luddite’s heart. I don’t actively kick against the pricks but I usually have to be gently led into a new technology that will work for me. I’m fine with books and records and running shoes. If technology can help be a better scholar, spouse, parent, teacher, musician, friend, or runner, I’m all in. Twitter has connected me. GIFs have enriched me and Kris. GPS has led me. Mendeley has organized me. Wix has nearly destroyed me.

It is not the platform itself. I enjoy the many ways to present data in Wix. It’s probably one of the easiest ways to create a website. I think what I was able to do was passably interesting. The problem was that I could not think clearly when engaging with it. It is not that it was on a computer screen. I’ve been working on computer screens since I was fourteen. It’s not that it was beyond my technological capacity. I was really only trying to create text boxes. I would have been fine with that. It was that I felt severely restricted in my ability to think clearly about the information. I have a pretty good sense of direction. The world reveals itself to those who travel on foot, says Werner Herzog. The world for me reduced to 104 square inches and I couldn’t see a thing. I knew that information was on another tab, on another page, past another click-through, but it was still out of mind. For me, walking by foot allows for reading the world, noticing. Creating a Wix page chained my ankle to a post in the yard and all I wanted to do was keep moving.
What just happened Monsieur Latour?

The computer will tell us. It has a biography of its own that intersects with mine. It now sits on my lap. It is showing me what I am typing. It is producing a glow that weakly combats the upward pointing desk lamp on my bed stand. It is doing a lot of things that I don’t really understand. It is somehow memorizing my thoughts. The picture that I took of the cotton candy sunset is now obstructed by my Word document. The Word document itself resembles a piece of paper, and (now I’ve switched to Times New Roman to more accurately get a feel for how much I’ve been writing) the text that is presenting itself when the keys are pressed looks similar to the font of a typewriter I would use sometimes as a kid, mostly because I liked to see the arms of the typeface move as I pressed the buttons. Sometimes I would press the buttons extra slowly to see if the slightest kiss would still leave a mark. I wonder if the computer knows that there is a small desk fan blowing in the room.

Back to something more traceable. Let’s pick a button on the computer. I don’t want to lose my writing, so I’m going to save my document. The “save” button (like a shirt button?) is an icon (like a religious icon?) of a 3.5” floppy disc (Does anyone still use those? Will my children ever see an actual one?). I use the touchpad mouse (hmm?) to move the cursor so I (or the computer?) can press the save button (is it really pressing?)… I have to go through the motions twice to be able to register exactly how my hands are interacting (coacting?) with the computer. Oh yeah, I am pressing something I guess… the left click button (another button? But it didn’t click.)

Where is the crossed-out god?

What I have attempted to show in the above narrative is a nod to the complexity of viewing human and non-human interactions through the Actor Network Theory. A simple actant, like a “save” icon or a photograph is a node to multiple networks, and a single line is untraceable. This does not invalidate the theory. It may serve to strengthen the argument. What was shown was the hybridity of human and nonhuman in certain planes, and the way in which the actants and networks that make up assemblages are hidden from human perception when we don’t think of them as somehow agentive. I can’t claim that the Wix restricted my ability to think without recognizing a kind of agency of the software to restrict. But Wix may only be restrictive on my laptop screen. Is it my screen that is restricting me? Is it the team of designers? Is it a decision made by the team of designers? We know it wasn’t Wix acting alone.

http://jackstephenpeterso.wix.com/multitudes

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