Social relations included in design
Some quotes from Latour, B. Pragmatogonies: A Mythical Account of How Humans and Nonhumans Swap Properties. American Behavioural Scientist 37(6), 1994, 791-808 to keep up my sleeve:
“According to my origin myth, it is impossible even to conceive of an artifact that does not incorporate social relations, or to define a social structure without the integration of nonhumans into it. Every human interaction is sociotechnical.
(…)
[cannot consider] the artifacts with which we share so much of our society as mere things. They deserve better, they deserve to be housed in our intellectual culture as so many fully fledged social actors. They mediate our social action? No, they are us“
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Why do I blog this? morning cultural sessions with bruno latour with a Golden Yunnan tea.
August 30th, 2007 at 5:39 pm
This is a good find — my Latour bibliography hasn’t ranged much beyond his book writing. It’s interesting this approach of creating mythologies as histories that help explicate our deep, deep inextricable imbrications with the things we make and the practices of making them. It’s like making a history that tells different stories about where we are and where we can go — creating new possible futures. But, I wonder — once you have created this appreciation of the lived nature of (social)objects — then what? How does this shape and inform the creation and design of new kinds of social objects, and to what ends? What practices are most crucially in need of new origin myths?
August 30th, 2007 at 10:02 pm
well I guess Latour’s point is less about design than promoting a comprehensive or descriptive approach of reality, he’s a sociologist and the only prognostications he has done were into politics, not design.
but that’s definitely a good point, and food for thoughts for the nearfuturelaboratory; my take here is that going though this process (uncovering the lived nature of social objects) should help to unfold new opportunities, new practices and eventually new myths(?)
I really like this writing style, very poetic IMHO