How Artifacts Acquire Agency

It is common to view the technologies that surround us as either tools ormachines. This distinction is often understood to reflect a difference between kinds oftechnology: those which operate by human agency, and those which operate by theirown, technological form of performative agency. This paper aims to explore how commonarguments for the performative agency of machines ultimately fail to establishthe claim that anything other than humans are capable of performing tasks. In light ofsuch problems, I will propose an alternative conception which understands machinesto be distinguished by the way in which the human agency on which they dependis concealed. After examining reasons why we should consider this concealment torepresent a social rather than technological phenomenon, this paper concludes byexploring implications this view holds for the way in which the ethics of automationis approached in the philosophy of technology.