It is paradoxical when Bruno Latour, one of the founders of the wonderfully illuminating perspective on human beings’ relations with technology called Actor Network Theory, writes that “purposeful action and intentionality may not be properties of objects, but they are also not properties of humans either. They are properties of institutions, apparatuses.” Whether this is plausible as an account of human purpose or intention, it is hardly helpful to those who want to defend the role of human agency in our understanding of the social world.

Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, loc. 439