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2. last time computer-supported cooperative work
design games and language games
architectural design
physical architecture
architecture of cyberspace
maps/diagrams of discussion forums
thread forms
winograd & flores: any organization is constituted as a network of recurrent conversations
architecture + performance
3. last time: thread forms of online discussion
4. last time: diagrams of discussion “rules”
5. outline machiavelli: a life
excerpts from “the prince”
latour on heterogeneous engineering/ sociotechnical “rhetorics”
mapping the actor-networks of a newsgroup
a definition of media as machinations
6. who was machiavelli?
7. machiavelli: a timeline 1469 May 3, born in Florence the son of a jurist.
1494 The Medici expelled from Florence. Machiavelli Appointed clerk to Adriani in the second chancery.
1498 Adriani becomes chancelor and Machiavelli succeeds him as second chancellor and secretary.
1499 Sent to Forli to negotiate the continuance of a loan to Catherine Sforza.
1500 Sent to France where he meets with Louis XII and the Cardinal of Rouen.
1502 Marries Marietta Corsini. Sent to Romagna as envoy to Cesare Borgia where he witnessed the events leading up to Borgia's murder.
1503-1510 Returns to Florence; Second mission to France; reorganizes the military of Florence; sent to the court of the Emperer Maximilian; Third mission to France.
1512 The Medici returns with a Spanish army and Florence throws out Soderini and welcomes the Medici. Machiavelli dismissed from office and retires to San Casciano.
1513 Imprisoned after accused of participation in a conspiracy. Is tortured and then released upon Giovanni de Medici's election to the papacy. Returns to San Casciano and writes
The Prince -
1519 Consulted by the Medici on a new constitution for Florence which he offers in his Discourses.
1520 Appearance of The Art of War and The Life of Castruccio Castracane. Commissioned to write the History of Florence.
1526 Clement VII employes Machiavelli first in inspecting the fortifications of Florence and then sending him to attend the historian Francesco Guicciardini. He meets Guicciardini in Bologna later in the year as well.
1527 June 20, dies in Florence.
see Oxford Modern Political Theorists Page
8. the prince: table of contents (1/2) Chapter I: How Many Kinds Of Principalities There Are, And By What Means They Are Acquired
Chapter II: Concerning Hereditary Principalities
Chapter III: Concerning Mixed Principalities
Chapter IV: Why The Kingdom Of Darius, Conquered By Alexander, Did Not Rebel Against The Successors Of Alexander At His Death
Chapter V: Concerning The Way To Govern Cities Or Principalities Which Lived Under Their Own Laws Before They Were Annexed
Chapter VI: Concerning New Principalities Which Are Acquired By One's Own Arms And Ability
Chapter VII: Concerning New Principalities Which Are Acquired Either By The Arms Of Others Or By Good Fortune
Chapter VIII: Concerning Those Who Have Obtained A Principality By Wickedness
Chapter IX: Concerning A Civil Principality
Chapter X: Concerning The Way In Which The Strength Of All Principalities Ought To Be Measured
Chapter XI: Concerning Ecclesiastical Principalities
Chapter XII: How Many Kinds Of Soldiery There Are, And Concerning Mercenaries
Chapter XIII: Concerning Auxiliaries, Mixed Soldiery, And One's Own
Chapter XIV: That Which Concerns A Prince On The Subject Of The Art Of War
Chapter XV: Concerning Things For Which Men, And Especially Princes, Are Praised Or Blamed
9. the prince: table of contents (2/2) Chapter XVI: Concerning Liberality And Meanness
Chapter XVII: Concerning Cruelty And Clemency, And Whether It Is Better To Be Loved Than Feared
Chapter XVIII: Concerning The Way In Which Princes Should Keep Faith
Chapter XIX: That One Should Avoid Being Despised And Hated
Chapter XX: Are Fortresses, And Many Other Things To Which Princes Often Resort, Advantageous Or Hurtful?
Chapter XXI: How A Prince Should Conduct Himself As To Gain Renown
Chapter XXII: Concerning The Secretaries Of Princes
Chapter XXIII: How Flatterers Should Be Avoided
Chapter XXIV: The Princes Of Italy Have Lost Their States
Chapter XXV: What Fortune Can Effect In Human Affairs, And How To Withstand Her
Chapter XXVI: An Exhortation To Liberate Italy From The Barbarians
10. summary of the prince Machiavelli opens The Prince describing the two principal types of governments: monarchies and republics. His focus in The Prince is on monarchies. The most controversial aspects of Machiavelli's analysis emerge in the middle chapters of his work. In Chapter 15 he proposes to describe the truth about surviving as a monarch, rather than recommending lofty moral ideals. He describes those virtues which, on face value, we think a prince should possess. He concludes that some "virtues" will lead to a prince's destruction, whereas some "vices" allow him to survive. Indeed, the virtues which we commonly praise in people might lead to his downfall. In chapter 16 he notes that we commonly think that it is best for a prince to have a reputation of being generous. However, if his generosity is done in secret, no one will know about it and he will be thought to be greedy. If it is done openly, then he risks going broke to maintain his reputation. He will then extort more money from his subjects and thus be hated. For Machiavelli, it is best for a prince to have a reputation for being stingy. Machiavelli anticipates examples one might give of generous monarchs who have been successful. He concludes that generosity should only be shown to soldiers with goods taken from a pillaged enemy city. In Chapter 17 he argues that it is better for a prince to be severe when punishing people rather than merciful. Severity through death sentences affects only a few, but it deters crimes which affects many. Further, he argues, it is better to be feared than to be loved. However, the prince should avoid being hated, which he can easily accomplish by not confiscating the property of his subjects: "people more quickly forget the death of their father than the loss of their inheritance." In Chapter 18, perhaps the most controversial section of The Prince, Machiavelli argues that the prince should know how to be deceitful when it suits his purpose. When the prince needs to be deceitful, though, he must not appear that way. Indeed he must always exhibit five virtues in particular: mercy, honesty, humaneness, uprightness, and religiousness. In Chapter 19 Machiavelli argues that the prince must avoid doing things which will cause him to be hated. This is accomplished by not confiscating property, and not appearing greedy or wishy-washy. In fact, the best way to avoid being overthrown is to avoid being hated.
from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
11. machiavellian strategies As in Machiavelli’s Prince, the progressive building up of an empire is a series of decisions about alliances: With whom can I collaborate? Whom should I write off? How can I make this one faithful? Is this other one reliable? Is this one a credible spokesperson? But what did not occur to Machiavelli is that these alliances can cut across the boundaries between human beings and “things.”
Latour, Science in Action, pp. 124-125
12. mixtures of human and non-human actors The first thing that should be done in order to expand The Prince and render history less opaque is to get rid of these twin artefacts, society and technique. To do so we simply have to place ourselves in the new Princes' own position. This is what Machiavelli did, thus transcending the narrow definition of ethics of his predecessors, and this is what the best contemporary analysts of socio-technics have done. Each of these case studies shifts the attention away from the two artefacts of society and technique (left part of the diagram) and leads us to a socio-technical position in which we see the innovators, or entrepreneurs, appealing from one set of alliances with human actors to another set of alliances with non-human actors, thus increasing the heterogeneity of the mixture at each turn of the negotiation (right part of the diagram). Latour, How to write ‘The Prince’ for machines
13. what is latour describing? heterogeneous engineering? (Law, 1986)
the ‘seamless web’? (Hughes, 1979)
rhetoric? “Rhetoric is the name of the discipline that has, for millenia, studied how people are made to believe and behave and taught people how to persuade others. Rhetoric ... becomes more when debates ... become scientific and technical. ... the more controversies go on, the more we are led into what are called ‘technicalities.’ This is understandablesince people in disagreement open more and more black boxes and are led further and further upstream into the conditions that produced the statements.” Latour, Science in Action, p. 30
14. what’s wrong with this picture?
15. latour’s alternative
16. how are human and non-human alliances stitched together? actor-networks
17. the actor-network approach ...picture the following comic strip: we start with a technical sentence which is devoid of any trace of fabrication, construction or ownership; we then put it in quotation marks, add to this speaking character another character to whom it is speaking; then we place all of them in a specific situation, somewhere in time and space, surrounded by equipment, machines colleagues; then when the controversy heats up a bit we look at where the disputing people go and what sort of new elements they fetch, recruit or seduce in order to convince their colleagues; then, we see how the people being convinced stop discussing with one another; situations, localizations, even people start being slowly erased; on the last picture we see a new sentence, without any quotation marks, written in a text book [or technical manual; or piece of software] similar to the one we started with in the first picture. Latour, Science in Action
18. the approach: attachments not dichotomies from bruno latour,
science in action:
how to follow
scientists
and engineers
through
society (1987)
19. actor-network theory: actors (actants) “An 'actor' in ANT is a semiotic definition -- an actant --, that is, something that acts or to which activity is granted by others. It implies no special motivation of human individual actors, nor of humans in general. An actant can literally be anything provided it is granted to be the source of an action.”
cf., the narrative theory and semiotics of Greimas on “actants” and “isotopies”
“...actors are not conceived as fixed entities but as flows, as circulating objects, undergoing trials, and their stability, continuity, isotopies has to be obtained by other actions and other trials.”
20. what/who is an actant? according to whom?
21. a list of actants from a newgroup participant/poster
message
quotes
url
non-newsgroup publications
films
corporations
diseases
authority figures
22. actor-network from different povs pick a poster
look for all of the actants linked to the poster
pick a second poster
watch how the actants move away or towards the first and second posters
continue with another poster, and another, etc.
23. to map a discussion using actor-networks list all of the possible actants
pick one actant -- this will be your first point of view (pov)
examine how the list of actants are linked together from the first pov
pick a second, third, fourth, etc. actant and examine the links between all of the rest of the actants from each of these povs
pay attention to exchanges (e.g., replies) between actants: follow how actants are recruited from from one network into another, from one “side” to another
24. machine v. tool v. medium machine: A machine, as its name implies, is first of all, a machination, a stratagem, a kind of cunning, where borrowed forces keep one another in check so that none can fly apart from the group.
tool: This makes a machine different from a tool which is a single element held directly in the hand of a man or a woman.
Latour, Science in Action, p. 129
medium: A medium is a material, device, or process that holds people together or separates them apart from one another. I.e., a medium is a machine in Latour’s terms.
25. next time online theater
