Bruno Latour distinguished 4 different ways of mediating technology:
Program of Action, series of goals, steps and intentions
Goal Translation
On its way to achieve a goal one might experience certain interruptions and barriers, preventing to reach that goal. In this case a person might fall back on help from technology. The theory suggests that a man + technology here become a third entity - “a fusion of the 2”. This also opens more possibilities and opportunities to be achieved. If a person decides to stick to the original goal, then technology play a role of a neutral tool and allowed this man to be separate from it. But this technology also opened up, created a link that did not exist before to other goals and its a matter of choice of the person whether to take this chance or not.
Composition of Action
Action is simply not a property of humans but of an association of participants
In this situation a man seizes upon some other agents to achieve the original task. Certain technology (agents) help him to remove certain obstacles (sub-goals), in order to achieve the original goal. “Man flies” - flying is a property of the whole association of entities that includes airports, planes, ticket counters etc. Therefore it is not a man that flies, but a complex relation of different objects and technology that make flying possible.
BlackBoxing - a joint production of actors and artifacts entirely opaque.
Objects around us are hidden behind their function and become transparent, as long as they function well. We do not know what is inside them, that makes them work,. We are disinterested and ignorant in what is hidden beneath its cover until they break. When this happens we start to realise the complex structure of this silent object and how much thought and effort was put into it to achieve the balance of all parts, so that it would become transparent and hide back. “How far back in time, away in space should we retrace our steps to follow all those silent entities that contribute peacefully to the silent operation”.
Delegating our responsibilities to non-human objects
Humans + Technology = Monster or Hybrid
We begin to realise that technology is not just a collection of instruments. Humans specifically created artifacts to delegate responsibilities to them, which implies that they are separate objects. However, when we get to use this technology we don’t just take it up, we embody them into ourselves. Technology becomes an extension of human faculties, which imitates human capabilities and enhances human qualities, but it is still restricted to only one sensory domain. And in a way we can argue that it limits human abilities. We must realise that technology is an extension of our body.
Feel the experience of a knife, when cutting a cake. Feeling is coming from the knife, not us and this is a monstrous experience. When we write, we don’t think about the experience, we feel on the tip of the pen. Blind people feel the end of the cane. We encorporate, become at one with objects, tools.