A key part of understanding the dynamics of the
socio-technical is to focus on the relationships
between an object and surrounding actors, including,
importantly for our analysis, ‘the public’ as users,
consumers, customers etc. (Akrich 1992). Technology
and system developers ascribe imagined roles for
actors which they may or may not take up and
spaces in which they may or may not operate
(Bijker 1995). These actors in turn can devise their
own roles and alternative meanings for objects
that have interpretive flexibility in how they are
understood and represented (Law and Callon 1987).
Understanding how changes in socio-technical
systems take place therefore requires an analysis that
recognises the interactive roles of multiple actors
at different scales of activity (Elzen and Wieczorek
2005), the structural factors and distributions of