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Abstract

In this article, I engage the discussion of access within the field of computers and writing and revisit the issue of the digital divide. My discussion of access focuses on operationalizing access as what Annette Powell calls “access(ing)” (2007), a process of enacting and coordination between humans and nonhumans. Drawing on Actor-Network Theory and digital literacy narrative methodology, I present the story of Diana as a problematic case study through which I ask scholars to think about accessing in deeply ecological and newly traceable ways. I end by noting that stories like Diana's challenge researchers to think of accessing as enacted, distributed, and traceable across networks.

9. Conclusion

Stories like Diana’s challenge how we think of access, even challenging our notions of what practices are a part of accessing. When we look closely and carefully at a story like hers, we notice that accessing is enacted, distributed, and coordinated differently across networks of people and things. Simply put, access to Twitter is easy. Accessing the professional networksthat Twitter is a part of is hard. Accessing the parts of those professional networksthat take place away from, but are deeply linked to Twitter, is even more difficult. ANT provides us a way of seeing how professional networks are accessed and coordinated. Sometimes people enact access by introducing people to each other,sometimes texts like articles coordinate accessing by placing work on colleagues’ screens, and other times social networks like Facebook can coordinate a great many people giving them access to our lives and our work. Tracing the moments of accessing, where a moment is given epistemological heft in the mind of a person, should not be thought of as just a “mental” moment. These moments refer outward from the subject and are about the world and the technology as well as the individual’s interpretation. Thus, ANT can be useful for us to trace the process of accessing as one of coordination when these moments come to organize, and make sense of rhetorical actions because someone or something makes it an association. Access never just happens. As with Diana, something or someone is always coordinating that activity between technologies and people. If our theories are tuned to looking for both the people and things involved, we might better map the processes of accessing more accurately within their respective social and ecological landscape.