Editors’ Choice: The Agency of Digital Things (in which Templates and Snippets of Code Attack!)

As an archaeologist, I often talk about how objects have agency. They can make us move, act, and think in particular ways.

The ‘Berlin key’, for example, forces users to lock doors whenever they are closed (see Bruno Latour‘s work). Monuments make us remember certain people and events in very particular ways. Many anthropologists now argue that, in fact, we are all already cyborgs – the lines have been blurred between humans and material culture/technology.

There have also been some fantastic discussions recently about digital materiality, and digital ‘things’. This concept has implications for the ways in which we understand our relationship to digital technologies, archive and preserve virtual things, and study and discuss them.

This is a story about digital objects controlling digital archaeologists.

Read More: The Agency of Digital Things (in which Templates and Snippets of Code Attack!) | Institute on Digital Archaeology Method & Practice