A big part of my research revolves around Actor Network theory, and Latour’s work. I think one article that did a great job of summarizing the process was “Mixing Humans with Non-Humans: Sociology of a Door-Closer,” as it did a great job of highlighting the door as more than an inanimate object. Instead, Latour discusses how the door requires a certain understanding of its user, and based on that can discriminate on how comfortable someone is using the door, based on how “close” they are to the door. This way of discussing a common day-to-day artifact was a big inspiration into forming my interest in how this applies to other forms of technologies, while tying culture into the conversation as well.
A key part of this project is, well, talking to people, so I reached out to people I knew who lived in Japan to interview them on the subject. The goal was to keep it as free flowing as possible, so rather than conducting a formal interview, I aimed to simply have a conversation. Due to the time zone difference, it’s been rather hard to establish contact. However, I managed to have a very interesting discussion with one of the interviewees regarding the idea of mundane technology in the public sphere. In their eyes, the ability to have public mundane technology represented some sort of security, and respect for public goods. With some similarities to the broken window theory, he felt that the emergence of some of the public mundane technologies in Tokyo were exemplary of the safety and moral conduct of the inhabitants. I thought this was a very interesting narrative and explanation for the emergence of such public services. He also mentioned some noteworthy differences he felt moving to the states from Japan, both in regards to the public and private sphere. As a whole, it was refreshing to hear someone speak about a topic and listen to their story rather than read research articles on it; I got so caught up that the interview lasted more than two hours.
