S.TRUEMAN PhD THESIS 2016

282

(remote nurses) are never located in their bodies alone. Hence remote general nurses, when delivering mental healthcare are thinking, acting, writing and nursing (all the attributes normally ascribed to human beings or nurses) from, and through ‘networks that pass through and ramify, both within and beyond the body’ (Law, 1992a, p. 3). Hence the remote nurse is not an isolated and a remote individual, but always part of a network. Medications, from an actor-network perspective, are a quintessential example of this. 8.2.9.3 Technology at large in the remote nurse’s social world Another black box concerning remote nurses is their taken for granted reliance on various technologies which assist in the delivery of mental healthcare. As Callon and Latour (1981) stated, ‘[a] black box contains that which no longer needs to be considered, those things whose contents have become a matter of indifference’ (p. 285). Planes, motor vehicles, computers and mobile phones are black boxes of technology which remote nurses use when delivering mental healthcare. Each consists of equally complex black boxes that depend on techniques, materials, thought processes and behaviours. When they do not operate as they should, or as expected, it is only then that the remote nurse thinks about its complexity. The annoyance or frustration of when mobile coverage is not available, or a plane is delayed for mechanical reasons, or the computer is not able to connect to the internet, are such occasions. The taken for granted stance of the remote nurse is challenged and thought is channelled into the social aspects and technical elements of the black box. One point emerges. Technical objects are not things so much as they are processes. The relationships between the heterogeneous actors that come to stand behind technologies are never static and unchanging; they are constantly being performed. Hence to identify a