[Air-L] Using ANT as ethos and method

gus andrews gus.andrews at gmail.com
Tue Feb 10 08:39:29 PST 2009


Tamara, I have also taken a stab at using ANT for describing digital
culture and what is "cool" and not cool -- look for my article in
Fibreculture: http://journal.fibreculture.org/issue8/issue8_andrews.html
As Jeremy mentioned, I found ANT was a little unwieldy for describing
zeitgeisty arguments, and it's definitely not so much a method; it's
better suited for understanding change over time in more concrete
scientific arguments. While Latour and others have critiqued the
original model he set up, I saw him speak this past weekend at
Columbia and it's interesting how much his ANT ideas still shape what
he's working on now :)

That said, I've also done some work on why MMO play "isn't cool,"
drawing on the yet-unpublished dissertation of a friend of mine,
Austin Grossman. Both of us drew on The Dialectic of the Enlightenment
to make the case. I covered this in my master's thesis -- let me know
if you'd like a look at it.

Gillian "Gus" Andrews
Doctoral student, Communications in Education
Teachers College, Columbia University



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