Latour attempts to convince the reader that material artifacts play an important role in creating and reaching the level of morality that we employ. He turns down the idea that individual humans are the base of all responsibility and instead makes the point that what is morally desirable depends on the interaction between humans and technologies. He says “To balance our accounts of society, we simply have to turn our exclusive attention away from humans and look also at nonhumans” (227). He also points out that here are the social masses that make up our morality. “The distance between morality and force is not as wide as moralists expect; or more exactly, clever engineers have made it smaller” (253). However, “The paradox of technology is that it is thought to be at one of the extremes” (244).
Nonhuman artifacts are part of the negotiations between people, institutions, and organizations that help to develop sociotechnical systems. “The beauty of artifacts is that they take on themselves the contradictory wishes or needs of humans and nonhumans” (247). For example, Latour illustrates his argument by using the example of a door groom that automatically closes a door after people pass through it. This then replaces the need for individuals to act responsibly and shut it behind them. This and Latour’s other examples demonstrate that the task of maintaining duties, values, and ethics can be delegated to a non-human entity. This is done with technological design and the replacing, compelling, and circumventing of human action through it.
These nonhumans don’t think like people do or decide how they will act, but their nature can play a comparable role. Artifacts can be deliberately designed to replace, constrain, and shape human action. They can appear to determine or compel certain actions. They are able to shape the decisions we make, the effects of our actions, and even the way we work in the world. “When humans are displaced and deskilled, nonhumans have to be upgraded and reskilled” (232). The behavior imposed back onto a human by a nonhuman delegates prescription, which is the “moral and ethical dimension of mechanisms” (232). Therefore, these non-humans are important in mediating human relationships.
Latour points out that we are not only able to delegate force to nonhumans, but also values, duties, and ethics. It is due to this morality that we behave so ethically, thus, “the sum of morality does not only remains stable but increases enormously with the population of nonhumans” (232).
Latour claims that he does not hold a bias or discriminate between the human and inhuman, but instead sees only actors that exchange their properties (236). He proposes that this attribution of roles and action is also a choice. “The label ‘inhuman’ applied to techniques simply overlooks translation mechanisms and the many choices that exist for figuring or defiguring, personifying or abstracting, embodying or disembodying actors” (241).
In the end of the article, Latour says that “It is that society itself is to be rethought from top to bottom once we add to it the facts and the artifacts that makeup large sections of our social ties” and what appears in place is not the extremes of society and technology, nor a hybrid, but a “sui generis object: the collective thing” (254). He points out that what we are missing is not in the supposedly cold, efficient and inhuman technologies, but instead in our traditional social theories (254). I think what Latour’s getting at is that we can’t really understand how society works without looking at and understanding the influences that non-humans and technology has on our daily lives.
Latour asks if humans have been replaced by nonhumans, stating that this depends on the kind of action that has been translated or delegated to them (232). The discussion of this replacement in Latour’s article served as another connection to Sherry Turkle’s book Alone Together. He points out that nonhumans serve as a solution in certain instances because they substitute the unreliable human with a delegated nonhuman character (231). These nonhumans are able to make up for where we as humans are lacking. Similarly, in her discussion of robots, Turkle describes technology as seductive because it offers what meets our human vulnerabilities (1). According to her, we are drawn by the illusion of companionship with convenience and without the demands of intimacy. However, this presents risks of emotional dislocation. Turkle points out that since we already filter companionship through machines we now look to accept machines as companions. Robots have the power to dramatically alter our social lives by offering contact. However, they pose psychological risks by making us vulnerable to simplicities that may diminish us. In her discussion of AIBO, a robotic dog, Turkle points out that it is not the practice for the real, but a possible alternative that is not necessarily second best. There is a possibility that after robots serve as a better-than-nothing substitute; they might become equal or even preferable, to a pet or person (64).
Turkle asks what are we sacrificing when we look to robots as electronic companions? With this in comparison to Latour’s piece, I ask, is the nonhuman substitution of small things, such as a door groom, going to lead us to substitutions of a larger scale, such as nonhuman childcare? While the nonhuman artifacts may work better in some situations, are they best for all? Is it more efficient to replace humans with nonhumans? When is this true or not true? How would our relationships with each other change with increasing substitution? Even further, how would our ideas of morality change if we were to replace humans in various aspects of life? Surely our outlook would change in many ways altering this. So with the substitution of nonhumans for humans, are we really filling any gaps? These are many questions that come to my mind when reading both pieces. Additionally, both authors advocate that in order to understand our society, we must consider the role of technologies and their effects on our lives.
Turkle, S. (2011). Alone together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other. New York: Basic Books.
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