Reassembling Colgate University’s “Wireless Network”: Toward A Sociological Understanding of Wireless Networks

The current project is a senior thesis examining Colgate University's "wireless network" from social science perspective. This project critically draws Actor-Network Theory as presented by Bruno Latour in order to explore and analyze the university's "wireless network" as such, beyond its technical structure. In doing so, it adds to the theory by introducing the original notions of appropriation and blind spots, fill the gap in the existing Actor-Network Theory literature that largely focus on the production of an association by addressing what happens after it. This project offers an elaborate example of studying wireless networks from Actor-Network Theory standpoint, and defends the merit of Actor-Network Theory as a viable framework for examining the contemporary world with the increasing prominence of cyborg, hybrid associations. Its main method of data collection is ethnography, which involves interviews, field works, and accumulation of other relevant materials (photography, documents, diagrams, etc.).