Category: Descriptive Theories
Actor-Network Theory (ANT)
Summary: Actor-Network Theory is a framework and systematic way to consider the infrastructure surrounding technological achievements. Assigns agency to both human and non-human actors (e.g. artifacts)
Originator: Michel Callon (1991) and Bruno Latour (1992); John Law; others.
Key Terms: actor, network, generalized symmetry, equal agency
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Distributed Cognition (DCog)
Summary: Distributed cognition is a branch of cognitive science that proposes cognition and knowledge are not confined to an individual; rather, it is distributed across objects, individuals, artefacts, and tools in the environment.
Originators: Edwin Hutchins in the 1990s.
Key Terms: Cognition in the Wild, mind in the world, artefacts, environment, representational media
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Activity Theory
Summary: Activity Theory is a framework or descriptive tool for a system. People are socio-culturally embedded actors (not processors or system components). There exists a hierarchical analysis of motivated human action (levels of activity analysis).
Originator: Vygotsky, Leont’ev, Luria, and others starting in the 1920s.
Key terms: Activity, action, operation, object-orientedness, internalization/externalization, mediation, development.
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