Black Boxes

Recently I replaced a (probably) 10-year-old part in the dashboard of my car because it was broken. The part is known as a combination switch because it has a number of functions -- it works the indicators, the headlights and the horn. Only the indictors were broken, and then only in quite a specific way. The combination switch was assembled in such a way as to make disassembly of the switch-unit itself difficult, if not impossible. To fix the one broken aspect of the combination switch, I had to replace the entire switch. I could not disassemble the comdbination switch to see how it worked, nor to repair it.

Fro posted in a comment that he had a similar problem with the 25-year-old headlight switch on his rally car. However, Fro was able to disassemble the headlight switch, clean and repair it, and re-assemble it to restore it to working order.

"What makes a device like a computer "opaque" is not the users indifference to its inner workings, but the fact that it is technically difficult to get access to the operative mechanisms. These are locked into fixed assemblies and cannot be prized loose without a great deal of technical preparation and specialised access.

"Latour emphasises the issue of empowerment in his definition of the black box. He compares the early camera, consisting of an assembly of parts which could be set up and dismantled as the occaision demanded, to Eastman's ready-made and easy-to-use box camera: "with automation, a large number of elements is made to act as one, and Eastman benefits from the whole assembly. When many elemebnts are made to act as one, this is what I will call a black box." Eastman's camera was easy to use since the user needed to make very few adjustments on any occaision. At the same time, its integrated assembly exacerbated the extent to which the ordinary user became mystified about the inner workings of the camera and dependent upon the manufacturer.

The combination switch in my car is a metaphorical (and actual!) black box. Its internals are hidden away and its workings are opaque to me, even though I can speculate on what they might be. The headlight switch in Fro's car is transparent to Fro because he has pulled it apart, discovered its (mal)function and made it work again.


A black box.

"When people repair bicycles, radios, or cars, when the build their own stereos, they are doing more than saving money. They are surrounding themselves with things they have put together, things they have made transparent to themselves."

Quotes from Jordan and Lynch (1992). The Sociology of a Genetic Engineering Technique: Ritual and Rationality in the Performance of the "Plasmid Prep" in Clarke and Fujimura "The Right Tools for the Right Job".