Putting to (information) work: A Stengersian perspective on how information technologies and people influence information practices

Abstract:

Instead of merely subscribing to an unspecific inseparability in the co-constitution or mangle of information technologies and human-actors, there is a need for conceptual tools to describe and explicate the mechanics of how the enmeshment of technologies and human-beings is occurring in information contexts: how information technologies are both setting standards of the social conduct of information practices, and how people are using information technologies to regulate the social process. Building on an empirical study of human-technology relations in the context of archaeological information work, this article discusses how the imaginary of putting Stengers to work can make a contribution to such an end. Stengers describes an ideal system of human-actors and technology working seamlessly ?World-as-Clock?that is unattainable but can serve as a benchmark and a lens for understanding frictions and discrepancies in the cohesion of the two.