Latour’s laboratory
Bruno Latour is an intriguing person. He first caught global attention with his (and co-author Steve Woolgar’s) 1979 book Laboratory Life. In this work, Latour and Woolgar observed laboratory scientists ethnographically. Meaning, they’d follow scientists similar to how primatologists would follow chimpanzees in the wild. White coats were investigated in their natural habitat. This way, Latour thought he could analyse the behaviour of scientists and verify how discussions, negotiations, and rivalries shape what becomes “knowledge.”
After his inquiries, Latour concluded that scientists apply an awful lot of personal biases and human behaviours to so-called factually correct scientific research. For Latour, “facts” gain authority through social processes, institutional validation, and consensus-building. Not just through “objective” discovery.
Latour’s conclusion that science is not as factual as people tend to think triggered a fair bit of controversy. Even today, people find it hard to grasp how human behaviour can influence “truth-finding.” In his later work, Latour investigated this challenge through alternative lenses.
Modern Duality
Latour’s 1991 book We Have Never Been Modern makes an alternative claim to “truth-seeking.”
The global consensus is that the world became advanced during the enlightenment and scientific revolution. Science, intellectual debate, and a detachment from religious dogma allowed for a clear analytical outlook on the world. After the dark ages, we could finally really progress. The modern and “civilised” man was born.
However, Latour rejects this narrative. He questions whether the dichotomy between premodern and modern really happened. For Latour, being modern means that people treat nature and society as two completely separate worlds.
To put it simply:
- Nature — is objective and observable. This enables science and facts.
- Society — is constructed by humans and varies across cultures and time.
If we apply this to our UX context, we can see that engineering (the code) belongs in the “nature” domain, and that UX (the user) fits in the “society” camp.
This chasm explains why modern thinkers in the tech world can come to bizarre conclusions. Musk claims that research shouldn’t exist. Apparently, it’s a “relic term from academia.” Sure, why bother studying how a technology would serve the user? Why should a product align with the user’s mental model if one can stay in one’s “nature” bubble? A blatant example of the case Latour tries to prove.
Latour introduces two terms to clarify his ideas further.
- Purification — is the attempt to separate nature from society. The world needs to be purified so people can properly investigate it.
- Translation — is the process of connecting nature and society.
Purification, thus, is the way in which scientists want to reduce their scope to the materialistic content only, leaving the human side out. This so-called “bracketing” is what (some/most) engineers tend to do. They want to focus on the code without having to worry about human behaviour and corner cases some users might inflict on the product.
According to Latour, modernity is a myth built upon a “modern constitution.” This constitution contains 4 key premises:
- Nature is transcendent — Nature is pure and outside human influence.
- Society is immanent —Society is created by humans and changeable.
- Purification is total — Nature and society can’t mix/influence each other.
- The “crossed-out God” — God is publicly absent but privately influential.
The Reality: Hybrids
A total separation of nature and society is obviously nonsense. We also can’t separate code from the user.
Latour claims that modernity is a fantasy that simplifies a messy reality. He gives plenty of examples. Climate change, ozone depletion, and genetically modified organisms are domains where nature and society clearly influence each other. Latour calls these phenomena quasi-objects or hybrids.
Hybrids combine science, politics, culture, technology, and everyday life elements.
Hybrids are everywhere. In laboratories, politics, and the economy. We, UXers, see hybrids in the browser, app store, and with wearables, the IoT etc.
I’m sure we all know some people who disqualify the social sciences. These can be the same types claiming that inflation automatically goes down if interest rates go up (economics), that women have always been in support of men (anthropology), that more police will lead to more safety (sociology), or how various languages don’t influence sexism (linguistics). Yes, they continuously pull from the social sciences’ body of work, which they reject. All claims above are incorrect, but that’s another thing.
For Latour, nature and society were never totally separate. Society created the illusion that this division existed. Every major issue is a mixture of science, politics, culture, and objects.
In other words: we have never been modern. Hence, the title of his book.
Working in the laboratory
Back to Latour’s lab life. Or to my lab life, actually. I happen to have worked for 8 years in the largest physics laboratory in the world. CERN, in Geneva, Switzerland. I led the UX design efforts for the unit that develops CERN’s software.
In my role, I was confined to meetings with former engineers and physicists, turned managers. The boardroom was therefore filled with scientists and rational linear thinkers who had a hard time putting their imagination into how humans might behave and how managerial decisions might have a broader effect on the social fabric of the organisation.
I don’t want to question their intellectual and emotional abilities. Their calculative capacity was always top-notch for sure. They were great individuals, too. Yet, I simply highlight that modern society and its education have taught these people to think about quarks, protons, databases, and if-else statements and not about emotions and human impulses. The promotions that brought them to the boardroom didn’t take emotional competencies into account either.
I honestly have to give my management mates credit for acknowledging their limitations. I was part of a coordination team that I badly wanted to leave due to stress, but they convinced me to stay because I brought the human voice and alternative insights to the table.
My value was that I was able to translate the “social” aspects of the laboratory and our teams into the “nature” domain. Translation is exactly the word Latour uses for the process of connecting these two polar worlds.
UX practitioners need to translate the (for some) undigestible world of user emotions into logical statements.