Instructional artifacts

This paper addresses the question if artifacts may be attributed some kind of agency. I take an activity-theoretical and instructional perspective, and argue that artifacts are used to guide actions. In other words, I claim that artifacts have instructional impact. In the introductory part of the paper is given an account of how three kinds of artifacts physical artifacts, linguistic representations, graphic representations – are instructionally used in coronary diagnostic work. The main part of the paper is an empirical exploration of how a forth kind of artifact, organizing of work, is instructionally used. The empirical case of clinical diagnostic work was conducted as a video-mediated conference between two collaborating diagnostic sub-teams, one of which had made the coronary investigation by means of coronary angiography, and the other was to take actions in the form of by-pass surgery or balloon dilatation. In the concluding part I discuss in what way it makes sense to say that organization of work and other artifacts have instructional properties.