Explored in this week’s reading is the properties of network theory of actor-networks. There are several misunderstandings are due to common usages of the word network itself and the connotations they imply. The first mistake would be to give it a common technical meaning in the sense of a sewage, or train, or subway, or telephone ‘network’. The second misunderstanding is easy to lift: the actor-network theory, where it has very little to do with the study of social networks.
This was probably the toughest reading for me during the course so far, and I’m glad that I was able to get through the symposium. One of the points that I picked up during the symposium is that actors doesn’t generally have to be humans it could be a object or a building. You could also check out Mardi‘s blog for more in depth analysis.