Blog Post 4: 10/11

     This week's topics discuss themes of agency, what it means and how each of us is set within a cycle of both affecting and being affected by our environment. Miller's piece is of particular interest to me because it seeks to better define the boundaries of agency as well as our general conception of it. Miller states that the concept of Agency goes far beyond the general definition of "to create change" and rather plays much more into ideas of intentionality, reaction and capacity. Miller believes that this research could be of particular value to education, as the assumption of agency in an environment which does not fully or contextually provide it can cause harm to the affected parries, or prevent them from reaching the expectations placed upon them by others. In addition, Miller believes that agency, in its wholistic nature is an important skill and area for refinement, stating that; ". This requires both technical and moral education, for our attributions of agency are ultimately moral judgments, matters of human decency and respect, matters of ‘‘acknowledgment" (Miller, 153). This leads neatly into the crux of Miller's case study.

In our modern world, the bounds of what is and is not possible with technology are ever-expanding, Miller's piece discusses the use of an automated scoring system to respond to students, and how this connects with the aforementioned ideas of agency. In my own experience, agency is a complicated subject. Agency is not a purely human skill, if it is a skill at all. Much argument has been had over the nature of agency itself, and whether we make our own choices or each of our actions is the immutable result of all actions that have come before, or perhaps even more disturbingly, if time itself is but a mere spatial dimension, and all things which have and will happen are already laid out, invisible from us. To return to the subject at hand, there is an interesting point in Miller's argument about the intentionality missing in machine agency, and how this affects its perception by presumably agent humans. Perhaps we will see this change in coming years, as technology becomes more sophisticated.

Miller, Carolyn. "What Can Automation Tell Us About Agency?" Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 2007, 137-157