Discuss about the Theory for Consumer Culture Theory for Visits Actor–Network Theory?
Technological advancements have lead computing technology to be an essential part of the today’s business world. Business organizations invest in information technology to develop their existing entrepreneurial culture. Actor-network theory is a network theory where both non-human and human being are considered as actants, the part of the technology (Farias 2012). Every technology inside a system is influenced by other agents which may or may not be a human being (Latour 2013).
In this documentation, two different computing news stories are chosen for Xiomi’s success story and fake profile users to face prosecution. The actants will be identified separately from the mentioned stories and how ANT network theory is implemented are highlighted for each of the stories. Also, the technical issues faced in both the stories are being highlighted in their respective parts of the document.
The Actor-Network theory was first developed in the year of 1960. The ANT (Actor-Network Theory) was first prepared by Michel Callon and Bruno Latour (Sayes 2014). The Actor-network theory is all about the professional relationship between man and machine.
Actor Network theory states that both human being and non-human beings like technologies, software or hardware related in a system are considered as actors. Players can be divided into human actors and nonhuman actors. Actors can associate and disassociate with other agent or agents and can further develop themselves in the system (Bajde 2013). On the other hand, the network can be defined as a processor activity between several technologies inside a particular system. Nodes are present in a system, and they help to connect several technologies with a system.
ANT theory looks into a system from the technological and sociological viewpoint. Today people are so much interrelated with the technological advancements that they have both online existence and social existence. The Actor-Network Theory is considered as a part of sociological science where both the non-human and human actors are involved in the whole networking system that is considered as the network.
The ANT is all about how the actors present in the technology shapes the system. Actants are referred as active entities within a network system (Fenwick and Edwards 2012). They can be human or can be non-human. To transmit the communication between actants tokens are used. To pass the objects from one actant to another a symbol is used.
Figure 1: Details of Actor Network Theory
(Source: Horowitz 2012, pp- 821)
The Actor-Network theory is a topic of science and technological studies and covers several aspect of technology, the reason for using the technologies, relationship of technology to the society. In the modern computing world, every actant is acted by some other actant. Somehow the statement is true regarding the Actor networking theory.
Computing News Story 1: Malware that tracks the address of the user
Recently a malware has been found on the internet which in fact by sending emails to the user can know that where the recipients lives. It is considered a dangerous form of malware which is also known as ransomware. According to the news, this ransomware is basically a scam email that quotes people’s postal addresses (Bajde 2013). The malware enters to the user computer by an email form. After getting into the user’s system the malware drastically affects the user’s systems and it encrypts and hack the files present in the system and spread it. Similarly, it tracks the postal code of the user and spread it along in the network. This malware encrypts all the files of the victim and demands a ransom to pay. The user must pay a ransom to further decrypt the affected files and again use them. As explained by Mr. Brandt, an official of US law department, these phishing mails come to user’s email account (Fenwick and Edwards 2012). The email contains a message where it says the user must pay hundred pounds to UK business. There is a button given below, which when clicked by user an invoice is printed and that leads to malware. As explained by Mr. Brandt to the news channel BBC, the malware is incredibly fast and by the time the user sees the warning message from the security center, the malware already encrypts all the files present in the hard drive. It works within a fraction of seconds. The payment has to be made in bitcoins (Latour 2013). Most importantly these phishing mails does not only include the name of the victims, it also includes the postal address of the user. According to the Dr. Steven Murdoch, a cybersecurity expert of the London university, it is still under investigation that how the scammers are able to get the address of the victim. It is being assumed that the scammers got the addresses form the online saved commercial website’s database.
In the above story actants are the technologies and human beings related with the computing story such as malware or more precisely the ransomware, the victims of the incident are human being involved in the story and the systems which are being affected (Farias 2012). From the Actor network theories’ point of view, the actants which are above mentioned play a crucial role in the given computing framework.
Analyzing on the Scale Culture
Recently after a big hacking in the radio frequency of US radio, there is an explicit podcast airs on the US radio channels. According to the Furcast group, the time span of the podcast was nearly 90 minutes which went on air without the prior knowledge of the radio channel authorities. The material was broadcasted from the 2 Texas radio stations (Barry 2013). The podcast was aimed at “furries”, i.e. people interested in animals are given human traits. According to the radio channels authority at the time of the podcast the password of the radio frequencies were changes so that no one can stop the material from being casted. It was found that, several radio stations and the radio networks were down due to technical errors. The hackers did reset the password, of the casting frequency, so that they can be changed only manually by resetting the passwords (Durepos and Mills 2012). The broadcast was from the furry group, which is a comedy group. After the incident the furry group is being interrogated but they strictly denied that the main aim of the show was actually to create sexual material. The Station name was” KAXA”, which broadcasts the furry show of 90 minutes. According to the radio officials they have been informed by the people that a show is going on, when they checked they found out that their radio equipment is being hacked and the broadcast was from an unknown source (Farias 2012). Another affected station “KIFT”, said that, they were able to regain the control only when they manually override the radio transmitter.
In the above story there both human and non-human actants are present. The technologies such as, affected radio transmitter, radio stations, podcast material are the non-human actants present in the above story. On the other hand, hackers, and radio channel listeners, radio authority officials were the human actants who were involved in the above computing story.
With the modern advancement in the networking, there’s also been instances of interruption of secure networks and hacking. As the world got so much dependent on the computer, it must be understood that there are also negative effects of computing.
In this report two computing stories have been discussed and in both the networking stories, actor network theory has been implemented successfully (Barry 2013). While discussing the first computing story, several limiting technological factors are notices such as unimproved email systems, unimproved computer security systems. These were highlighted as the technological limitations for the first computing story.
In the second computing story also similarly unimproved radio frequency password managing technology is highlighted as the technological barrier to the corresponding actor network theory.
In both the computing stories hackers were identified as the human actants. In the first computing story, the hackers were the one who sent the scam emails to the users. On the other hand, in the second computing story, hackers were the one who, hacked the radio stations. In both the computing stories, there were both human and non-human actants were involved. In the first computing story, the ANT is being implemented successfully, as the actants were listed in the respective computing stories (Durepos and Mills 2012). Similarly, on the second computing story, non-human and human actants are being highlighted in the story itself. In both the stories human actants were not being encouraged by anyone. They were found to be the professional hackers who committed the interruption in secure networking infrastructure.
Conclusion
The impact of technological advancements ranges from small scale business to large scale corporate sectors. Even our personal life is pretty much influenced by the effects of IT. With the concept of ANT, we analyzed what are the effects on the technological information system in the business success story and also how they are affecting in the corporate social networks. Regarding the actor-network theory discussed in this documentation two of the computing, stories are brought into the discussion. ANT considers human and non-human as actants so, all the involved elements are found within the network. Most of the IT organizations and growing industries uses the corporate social network as the means of the communication between customers, vendors, stakeholders and suppliers. Actor Network theory has been identified in both the computing stories mentioned above and actants are also identified.
References
Bajde, D., 2013. Consumer culture theory (re) visits actor–network theory Flattening consumption studies. Marketing Theory, 13(2), pp.227-242.
Barry, A., 2013. The translation zone: Between actor-network theory and international relations. Millennium-Journal of International Studies, 41(3), pp.413-429.
Best, J. and Walters, W., 2013. “Actor-Network Theory” and International Relationality: Lost (and Found) in Translation. International Political Sociology, 7(3), pp.332-334.
Bleakley, A., 2012. The proof is in the pudding: Putting actor-network-theory to work in medical education. Medical teacher, 34(6), pp.462-467.
David, L. and Halbert, L., 2014. Finance capital, actor-network theory and the struggle over calculative agencies in the business property markets of Mexico City Metropolitan Region. Regional Studies, 48(3), pp.516-529.
Durepos, G. and Mills, A.J., 2012. Actor-network theory, ANTi-history and critical organizational historiography. Organization, 19(6), pp.703-721.
Farias, I. and Bender, T. eds., 2012. Urban Assemblages: How actor-network theory changes urban studies. Routledge.
Fenwick, T. and Edwards, R., 2012. Researching education through actor-network theory. John Wiley & Sons.
Horowitz, L.S., 2012. Translation Alignment: Actorâ€ÂNetwork Theory, Resistance, and the Power Dynamics of Alliance in New Caledonia.Antipode, 44(3), pp.806-827.
Latour, B., 2013. Reassembling the Social. An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Journal of Economic Sociology, 14(2), pp.73-87.
Sales, E., 2014. Actor–Network Theory and methodology: Just what does it mean to say that nonhumans have agency. Social Studies of Science,44(1), pp.134-149.
Yaneva, A., 2013. Actor-network-theory approachestothearchaeologyofcontemporary architecture. The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of the Contemporary World, p.121.
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