After leaving university where I studied history and philosophy, I ended up at the accounting division of a giant corporation. I fairly quickly moved to a different position in which my task is to improve existing processes (Continuous Process Improvement). Many of my accounting-colleagues studied Economics, not philosophy. Yet, all of them told me extensively how useless their years of study were considering the job they’re currently doing. The obvious uselessness of studying philosophy all of a sudden wasn’t that bad anymore since studying economics was almost equally useless.
But there is more to philosophy than making it to the “equally useless”-league!
Last week I was discussing the implementation of certain ideas of improvement with a colleague. All of a sudden, it felt as if Latour and Heidegger started coloring my thoughts and arguments.
The question was to what extent I should write VBA code to automate a specific accounting process. The less code, the more input required from accountants. The more code, the more the ecology of the processes in questions would be tightened. The latter implies both a smoother going of the process if everything goes right, but also the possibility of total failure due to unexpected events. In explaining why this negative side played an important role and how we could figure out what the best option was to take I was surfing on Bruno Latour, Michel Callon, Andrzej Nowak, John Law and maybe a hint of Heidegger.
My whole argument revolved around the point that whatever solution we go for, we’re creating something within a certain ecology. If we’re putting everything into code; are we confident enough that our knowledge of this interconnected reality is sufficient? Whomever want to control everything, can be destroyed by everything. At any point, there might pop up an error seemingly out of nowhere. Instead of just thinking about invoice numbers, amounts, VAT, etc, shouldn’t we take a step back and take the agnostic view of the anthropologist?
Let us remind for a second what this view is. Firstly, it’s the empirical approach of reality in which we avoid categorizing data in our own categories, instead, uncovering the categories used in the object of study is part of the investigated reality. Secondly, everything that plays a role is by definition an actor (no matter whether it’s a computer, idea or accountant).
In terms of metaphysics, Latour avoids the Kantian question about the preconditions of reality in order to receive empirical data as we do by destroying the subject/object dualism all together. At the same time he takes so-called socially constructed categories as part of the studied reality. This means that they should be the product of the study and not the structure enforced on the object of study. The realm of metaphysics with Latour was entered when the subject/object distinction was detected as the primal source of theoretical delusion (eg. what is an actor?).
All kinds of actors that are too obvious or too opaque to think about all of a sudden come to the surface. Once they’re mapped, they’re manageable. The large body of texts written by Callon, Law, Latour and others might confuse the reader in assuming a complex structures of rules of how to start the research. While in fact, they say: follow the actors; what acts (or: plays a role) is an actor; describe, describe, describe. At the same time we should remind ourselves that actors aren’t clean building blocks. Actors do something and not necessarily in our favor. Also, thinking ecologically means to take chaotic interconnections (and thus uncertainty) as a given.
Latour does speak about creating a better reality. But he rarely seem to engage in doing so (unless we take his books as a creative addition, which they are). For me, re-creating is the most important part. Together with Andrzej Nowak, we should re-think the used categories and by doing so, make positive changes. But more importantly, categories are just part of the story, one of the many actors. Just like Benedict Anderson’s nationalism is a category not merely expressed or supported by the printing press, but existentially connected to it. Things matter (or matter matters). What does the army of actors consist of? How can we put them under our command? And where can they lead us?
The presented approach allows you to see what has always been there, but what fell out of your pre-existing categories. Bringing all the actors in sight and gearing-up with relevant tools should gives us an idea of our possibilities.
Does the army of Unsullied code give us enough power to be an all-ruling King? Or should we foster alliances with very different entities and set up a network based on opener negotiations with multiple power centers and less slaves?
Philosiful 