Interfaces, Efficiency, and Inequality: The Case of Digital (Auto-) Ethnography of Commercial Technology

In the article the author claims that the digital technologies today continue to be good topic for Actor-Network theory (ANT) research because they exemplify many famous Latourian ideas about the role of technological artifacts in moral and political life of society. By drawing upon some key insights from ANT and science and technology (STS) in general, the author tells three stories about how commercial digital application work. The stories are based upon participant observation experience of the author during his 16 months of work at the technical support unit in the UK mobile application. Firstly, the author tells about different digital interfaces in the work of the technical support that vary in how they mediate the communication with users. Second, the author shows that an inequality in the commercial app has a complex and unpredictable nature. Finally, he shows how the efficiency of the app is determined by the multiplicity of actors' ontological models that differently frame and enact their activity. After the (auto-)ethnographic experience of the author it remains open how to conjoin ANT and human-centered position of an ethnographer.