When cell phones were first introduced to public, they were bulky, expensive, and some even required a base unit that had to be transported along with phone. Good reception was a major problem and in general, early cell phones could only be used in certain locations were signal was particularly strong. As cell phone technology advanced, difficult in using them became less of a problem. Today, cell phone reception has improved greatly due to use of satellites and wireless services. As cell phones improved and became simple to use, importance of cell phones increased accordingly.

We are surrounded by knowledge in different forms. Although your own personal understanding of technology may not match that of, say, a computer programmer, computer you are using to read this piece – or, indeed, printer you used to print it – are products of applied knowledge, products which become symbols in a particular context. Your computer may mean one thing – or nothing – to you, but to someone else in a different place it means something else. The computer programmer is perhaps a good example of how one form of knowledge can be turned on its head and transformed into something else. The programmer uses computer to metamorphose his knowledge of programming into a piece of software which in turn is used by another to transform their knowledge… And so on. This transformation – flow – of knowledge is common in contemporary society. We are part of a culture which is obsessed with information. I intend here to describe how information is produced, particularly scientific facts, using examples from Power (1997) and Latour and Woolgar (1979). I will also use evidence from Strathern (2004), Tsoukas (1997) and Latour (1999) to illustrate how knowledge changes meaning as it travels.

Constructing Fact. In Laboratory Life (1979), Latour and Woolgar apply sociological theory to their ethnography of a scientific laboratory. They successfully trace construction of a scientific fact to creation of order out of disorder. To them, fundamental feature of a ‘fact’ is that it does not appear to be constructed by any outside forces: it is a taken-for-granted statement unflawed by modality. However they point out that in laboratory situation, environment can be broken down into ‘specific histories’ which have enabled items such as scientific equipment to become available at a certain point in time. Bachelard (1953) refers to laboratory equipment as ‘reified theory’, that is, that each piece of equipment is a construct of a theory that has been proven factual at a previous point in time.

Auditing People. The concept of ‘audit society’ was pinpointed by Michael Power (1996, 1997) and concerns a very particular pattern of knowledge designed to ‘develop essentially similar measures or conclusions from an examination of same evidence, data or records’ (American Accounting Association 1966: 10). Essentially audit is a process by which information is gathered in order to verify that something is happening as it should do, and/or to suggest methods by which this activity can be adjusted in order to function more effectively. In area of health and medicine, one use of audit data is ‘to stimulate more effective use of increasingly limited resources by creating an element of competition between those who supply medical services… And those who must purchase those services.’ (Power 1997: 104). Tsoukas (1997) also states that ‘… In a modern hospital sick person is turned into an information-rich patient; information about his or her illness can be systematically gathered – information speaks for, describes, represents patient. And when NHS computerises its files, a patient can be emailed, so to speak, from one part of country to other.’ (1997: 833).