This preface discusses Actor-Network Theory (ANT), and in particular Innovation Translation -its approach to innovation adoption and its value as an analytical framework for theorising technological innovation. It begins by noting the controversy with the name: actor-network theory (ANT), and whether this should be changed to something like "actant-rhyzome ontology" of "the sociology of translation." It then makes use of a number of early classic papers by Latour, Callon, and Law to show why

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... provides a useful framework for handling socio-technical situations without privileging the social over the technical or vice-versa. A process of technological innovation making use of an approach involving the four moments of Innovation Translation is illustrated and an argument made for its value in other socio-technical situations involving technological innovation. WHAT'S IN A NAME? Actor-network theory can be rather daunting for someone beginning to approach it: a superficial understanding of the idea of human and non-human actors is easy, but coming to a better idea of what this all means is not so straightforward. Actor-network theory (ANT) has been around since the mid-1980s and was developed by Bruno Latour, Michel Callon, and John Law in an attempt to give a significant voice to technological artefacts as they considered that both social and technical determinism are flawed. ANT was designed to instead give a socio-technical account in which neither social nor technical positions are privileged. In 1999 Latour remarked that that there were four things wrong with actor-network theory: "the word actor, the word network, the word 'theory' and the hyphen" (Latour, 1999) . Later he changed this view and notes that: "I was ready to drop this label for more elaborate ones like 'sociology of translation', 'actant-rhyzome ontology', 'sociology of innovation', and so on, until someone pointed out to me that the acronym A.N.T. was perfectly fit for a blind, myopic, workaholic, trail-sniffing and collective traveller. An ant writing for other ants, this fits my project very well!" (Latour, 2005:9). xiii This preface will use discussion of some of the early classic ANT papers (and also some more recent ones) to investigate why actor-network theory provides a useful approach to theorising technological innovation, and one that provides insights that other approaches do not.