Machine Vision & Touch: Agency in Human-machine relationships
After manually identifying each instance of touching within the database, we then explore these transitive constructions in more detail against Andreallo’s (2022) categories of touch. Our initial findings suggest that agency is constructed in complex ways, that both machines and humans have agency, that there are struggles around agency, and that there may be differences around gender-based agency. The research presented here also opens up a variety of avenues for future research, such as exploring how different senses are constructed in the Machine Vision database, and how different linguistic (and social semiotic) methods could be applied to the data.