Let’s begin with two propositions:

1/ No technology is fully determined by its negotiations.

2/ No technology is fully determined by its materiality.

The first statement deals in the dimension of associations (some call this the social dimension); the second statement deals in the dimension of postulation. In other words, the first proposition demands some account of material and the second demands some account of negotiation. Let’s follow an example.

The doorknob is an artifact that is often found on doors, but it isn’t always on doors. Doorknobs exist doorless in hardware stores, or affixed to other surfaces, such as walls, for aesthetic, and possibly functional, reasons. Linguistically, the doorknob is a portmanteau that is communicative of context and function, coupling what it is with what it is designed to do. We learn, or are taught, over time to use this as a way to open and close the affixed surface. Sometime this learning is through patterning–we watch our mothers and fathers, friends and strangers, twist or turn the object when passing beyond a doored threshold, and so follow accordingly. Other times, we are taught, or maybe scolded, as grimy-fingered children not to touch the door itself, hence relying on the bastion of the knob to avoid punishment. Additionally, we learn by material trial and error. The doorknob itself teaches us how to use it. When we don’t turn it (in certain cases mind you), the door will not open. The materiality of the doorknob allows us to grab it, as much as its often metallic contrast to matte paints on doors situate it as different (it jumps out in a phenomenological sense). But a round metallic doorknob differs only slightly from a trailer hitch at a short distance, so the material object doesn’t just afford and ally itself without effort.

In the same way, I have recently been considering how a technology comes to be a surveillance technology. Obviously, some part of this is materially embedded in the technology. A surveillance technology must detect, track, monitor, or watch something; it has to indicate that this something is present or not; it has to accommodate in its embodiment the objects of surveillance as well as the observers. But these are not everything. What makes something like a metal detector a surveillance measure, and so a security object? The simple answer is “It depends on what we think is worth watching.” Hence (and this should be no surprise), surveillance technologies must be rhetorically positioned, either by officials, or the public, or by themselves.

My claim is this happens at the stage of patenting, not just at the final production level. Patents provide the a formal((I mean this in two ways: formal in terms of the literal form of the patent itself and formal in terms of a patent as an official avenue)) co-location of actors. The document-objects technomorphize threats as well as threatmorphize technology.