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Artefacts that talk: Mediating technologies as multistable signs and tools

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Abstract

The article takes up the notion of artefacts as tools and signs and discusses how socially assistive robots impact professional work life and professional identities as multistable active change agents. It argues for a multistable understanding of tools as signs, building on a combination of post-phenomenology and cultural–historical activity theory to capture the embodied, cultural and historical learning processes initiated when technologies engage with humans in professional work life. Moreover, the article invokes the concept of relational agency as useful for capturing how staff may question the distribution of expertise between humans and machines.

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Notes

  1. The quotes are translated by the author from the Danish presentation of the new technologies at the homepage: www.arbejdsmiljoviden.dk/ Arbejdsmiljø: August 2009 + www.teknologisk.dk/paro (updated 29 January 2009. accessed 6 April 2011).

  2. Interviews with the leader, three staff members, observations and talks with people at the old peoples home were conducted in Jutland, Denmark 19–20 June 2010.

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Hasse, C. Artefacts that talk: Mediating technologies as multistable signs and tools. Subjectivity 6, 79–100 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1057/sub.2012.29

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