While
researchers in computer science may choose to concentrate on a study of aspects of computer
hardware and software alone, the business of information systems is how people interact
with and use computer-based systems. Information systems are complex socio-technical
entities involving both human and non-human components: systems analysts, designers,
programmers, end-users, managers, PCs, mainframes, software, data and operating systems.
These are only some of the many heterogeneous components of an information system.
Research into the implementation and operation of information systems needs to take this
heterogeneity into account, and find a way to give due regard to both the human and nonhuman
aspects of these systems.
While many approaches to research in technological areas treat the social and the technical
in entirely different ways, actor-network theory (ANT) proposes instead a socio-technical
account in which neither social nor technical positions are privileged. ANT deals with the
social-technical divide by denying that purely technical or purely social relations are possible,
and considers the world to be full of hybrid entities (Latour, 1993) containing both
human and non-human elements.
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