OK, so a couple of the concepts that are key to understanding - and that came up in a cross-faculty discussion at UWE t'other day - was the idea of where you can draw the line between the human and the technological. With people from a more computer-science background, they might see something like media as more the technology, whereas the cultural studies person is seeing the human.  Personally I see it as akin to where the Amazon meets the sea - the concepts are both made from much of the same material (or theory) and come from the same source (water) - we can still see where one ends and the other begins - if we feel the need to - yet for most of us, journeying on that route, we would not feel anything in crossing the boundary.  This is a complex way of saying - it complex and yet simple...

To assist in framing this, I am using a number of concepts in my work;

Actor - Taking this from Actor-Network Theory, Latour remarks that it is not so much as a term referring to a source of action, but that which is enacted upon, thus playing a role – much like an actor on the stage. So actors are those entities that play a role within a network to help it become what it is.

Agent - An entity that is capable of having a more independent role than an Actor, is something that can enact it's own decisions - it is said to have Agency; Agency is a concept used in philosophy and sociology to refer to the capacity of an agent to act in a world.

Got it?  God 'cos I'm not sure I have...