How to balance soft and hard technology?
Soft technologies are flexible, supporting creativity and change, because the gaps inside them have to be filled with processes constructed by people. They are needy and incomplete until people fill the holes, while hard technologies contain within them the processes and methods to achieve the ends for which they were designed [emphasis added], bring efficiency, scalability, replicability, freedom from error and speed. Conclusion: “Most learning technology research concentrates on technology (including methods and pedagogies) not the talent and skill with which it is applied that is frequently more significant” (Dron, 2011).
I would approach the use of technology a bit differently, asking why instead of how.
I find it combersome drawing a distinction between soft and hard technologies. Defining hard technologies as particular processes and methods that inherently achieve certain ends confines the user to act or think in a certain way. This leads to linking technologies to individuals based on socio-cultural-historical assumptions. If one concludes that it's not the technology but how one uses it, does it matter which contained processes and methods lead to arbitrary (decontextualized) ends?
When reflecting on the different (hard) technologies that I use, I have yet to find one that does everything. I am constantly adding and pruning technologies as my teaching and learning context changes. The hard technologies that I use (in aggregate) are as fluid, flexible, and incomplete as some soft technologies. Individual web tools serve as nodes that make up part of my PLN; a change in one can influence a change in others, similar to how people interact.
Jumping on the ANT bandwagon, I find it helpful to view technology as designing an assemblage (i.e., PLN) which views the social as a “very peculiar movement of re-association and reassembling” (Latour, 2005). I see a PLN as a movement that re-associates and reassembles reifying conceptualizations, people, and material.
Reifying conceptualizations is the process of making some abstract idea, notion, or problem more concrete through open and ongoing interaction. From a socio-technical perspective, people use artifacts to interact with each other around related conceptualizations. Interactions that connect conceptualizations, people, and material are contextually rich and provide the basis for one's teaching and learning rationale.
Consequently, my approach to technology would be to ask why someone chooses to interact within a PLN in ways that foster open and ongoing professional learning. Asking why, also requires asking what, how, when, and with whom (plus any other applicable question words), while embracing a perspectival sensitivity between subject (i.e., participants of the study) and object (i.e., researcher). In other words, it's about understanding how the individual's interpretation of becoming emerges from the recollection of the associations, assemblages, and dynamics of a PLN. It just so happens that my interest in such a topic has led me to a doctoral proposal.