Technology, Agency and Decision

Actor-network theory (ANT), as an important theory in the field of science and technology studies, treats artifacts as mediators and agents on the side of human beings in social networks. Human beings and technologies are mediators which transform the essence of each others. So, human actions, agencies and decisions are mediated; we decide and act »with «artifacts not» by« them. Decisions do not stem from an isolated human nature, and action and agency do not exclusively belong to human beings, but are distributed to a socio-technical network of human beings and objects. This approach creates some questions about relationship between artifacts and human beings and agency and human decision-making, including the followings: Does not distributed agency and agency of artifacts take away intentionality and freewill from man? What will happen to ethical and legal responsibilities of human beings? Following the distributed agency is the responsibility too distributed to the artifacts? Attempts have been made to provide answer to these questions in this paper. Based on the Actor-network theory (ANT) ’s approach, it will be demonstrated that network and symmetric approach to artifacts and considering them as mediators and agents, would not take away intentionality from human beings nor will it give intentionality to artifacts nor does it have non-intuitional consequences regarding responsibility.