Look who's acting!: Applying Actor Network Theory for studying knowledge sharing in a co-design project

Digital maker communities democratize manufacturing through hands on learning, trans-disciplinary work and open source knowledge sharing. Little is known how knowledge sharing actually happens. This study applied actor-network-theory as underlying theoretical framework to a co-design project in a digital maker community – the teletransportation project. At the core of this project was a basic digital design for a cup that can be 3D-printed. The study showed that the different network types re-assemble around nodes that result from translations (and therefore transformations) of the initial project idea and the code that allowed to 3D-print a cup. It was able to show translations and the circular movement in the network as well as translation costs, time effects, intermediaries and mediators