In discussing the three terms in their title, the editors state, “The term technological is meant to signal our focus on computers and computer networks, although the authors in this volume cover a wide range of digital environments…The terms ecologies and sustainability are meant to suggest the important task of maintaining the richly textured technological environments in which composition teachers and students learn, study, and communicate” (1)
The authors in this collection use Latour’s framework of “actor-network theory (ANT), a framework of understanding based on the “sociology of associations” (p. 9) among human and non-human actors” (3). These non-human actors can include objects, protocols, procedures and expenses, to list a few (4). There are “five keys sources of uncertainty that [are] characteristic of all ANT projects”:
- “There are no stable groups to study within social networks; rather, there are groups forming and reassembling on a constant basis” (3).
- Action comes from a combination of agencies. “One of the challenges of working within robust technological ecologies, then, is trying to follow the proliferation of actors involved in our projects. Who is connected to whom and how are they connected?” (3).
- “Objects have agency… The agency of the non-human actants requires the situated attention of teachers and scholars if our profession is to sustain and nourish healthy technological ecologies.” (3).
- We should focus on “matters of concern,” which allow for fluid, unstable situations, rather than on “matters of fact,” which are stable and unchangeable (4).
- Social network accounts should be recorded as descriptively as possible, which “requires the ability to work—often swiftly—in different modes of analysis, with shifting genres, and with new forms and means of distribution” (4).