CONCEPT
Obligatory Passage Point
A position in a network through which all other actants must pass to achieve their goals — the structural location that concentrates power regardless of the individual virtues of whoever occupies it. The concept that explains why the developer's power has dissolved and where it has migrated.
In every network, some positions matter more than others — not because the entities in them are intrinsically superior but because the network's topology routes all traffic through them. Michel Callon and Latour called these obligatory passage points. The concept reveals power as a feature of network architecture rather than a property of individuals. The developer occupying the passage point between human intention and executable code commanded a premium that attached to the position, not the person. AI has opened an alternative route around the developer — and in doing so, has relocated the passage point, not eliminated it. Claude is now the obligatory passage point in many creative and productive networks, with consequences for power distribution that remain largely unanalyzed.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The classical example is Louis Pasteur, whose laboratory Latour analyzed in The Pasteurization of France (1988). To understand