Laboratories - Latour Chap. 2

Moving from the representations of scientists work, we now come to the locations. This is a very interesting ordeal, here. Considering the various mobilization efforts and executions of information the world employs, to arrive at the very spot where ideas are thought of, tested, challenged, re-created, and primarily defined is a privilege. I raise my glass (of grape juice) to Latour, "Thank you for giving me a glance into this world. To Latour!"



At this point, I feel a dissenter is basically at a complete loss in this stage of "dissenting" as I will call it. He has gone through multiple different avenues to access crucial and pertinent information, often running into black boxes and/or supporters of these black boxes. As he now comes to the place where ideas originate and are tested, defined and executed, we, the watchers see very many different things. I'd like to expound on my thinking a little bit about these issues:

Inscriptions - A place where the dissenter encounters information that has been gathered via instruments, and/or different things and has been documented in support of the hypotheses/theories being tested. This process is interesting to me because it puts things into perspective with respect to the reality of scientists work and bring the invisible and unrepresented information into perspective that is visible, readable, measurable, and - for lack of better terms - interact-able. I've come to realize that inscription are crucial to the process of mobilization -- without inscriptions, people wouldn't really have anything to read, thus nothing to refer to, thus nothing to support, thus the non-making of black boxes.

Spokesmen and women - I always realized the importance of someone acting as a primary force to drive the progress of some new action or theory, but here Latour really brought things to life. As the ones who don't speak, the hypotheses and new ideas have no choice BUT to have someone speak for them in order to become public and useful for others to use.

Trials of Strength - This is the primary way of executing what Kosso defines as objectivity. New ypotheses and ideas , and discoveries from the like are tested under the scrutiny and pessimism of other actors who are unaware of these findings. Question, after question, after question, after question is thrown about various different elements that act as support to new discoveries. Without this process, new ideas and new discoveries are nothing. Or as my fellow tutor puts it, "you get laughed out of the building." Trials of strength really embody this process of figuring out which to throw out and which to not throw out.

Borrowing from other black boxes - This is the place where we can really see a connection between Latour and Kosso's auxiliary theories. The truth is, no matter how much we try to be the genius who comes with new ideas we neccessarily can't because they are tied into many different theories abotu the world that already exist. We are trained and brought up to believe certain things about the world and it is the use of these things that we come to understand or think about new ideas. Even those that are being tested in counter-laboratories.

Making actors betray their representatives - This is an itneresting new concept that I never thought about, and quite honestly, I think it is intriguing. I don't think that it is a key component to the dissenting process, however.

For the sake of writing I will stop here and touch on the other subjects later. As a partial conclusion, I am beginning to see the incredible process dissenters have to go through in order to dive into the upstream side of things. It is interesting. It is intriguing and it is intense. Basically, i will re-think diving into dissension opinions when I am faced with new issues in the world. There is a huge notion of WORK -- a four letter-word -- that comes along with dissension. I see why Latour says the dissenter either has to walk out or be prepared to do a whoooole lot of work and spend money in the meantime trying to enact these processes . I prefer to walk out!