‘‘Where Are the Missing Masses? The Sociology of a Few Mundane Artifacts’’

Bruno Latour

In Where Are the Missing Masses?, Bruno Latour “explores how artifacts can be deliberately designed to both replace human action and constrain and shape the actions of other humans” and how “technologies that are so commonplace that we don’t even think about them can shape the decisions we make, the effects our actions have, and the way we move through the world.”

Two concepts that Latour discusses that are particularly relevant for my thesis include the delegation of labor to nonhumans and the concept of anthropomorphism or “when you write that a groom is ‘on strike,’ this is only seen as a ‘projection,’ as they say, of a human behavior onto a nonhuman, cold, technical object, one by nature impervious to any feeling.” Both these concepts can be used as guides when evaluating other artifacts or concepts. Measuring the level of delegation and anthropomorphism that an artifact has will allow me to better understand the relationship between those qualities and the level of symbiosis that can be achieved with or through that artifact. By understanding that relationship, I will be better able to see what qualities to build into the experiences I design.

One thing to note is I will need to develop a scale for all three qualities so that I can effectively evaluate the qualities built into those artifacts.