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Chapter 7 - Placing Users and Nonusers at the Heart of Technology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 November 2019

By
Nelly Oudshoorn
Edited by
Todd L. Pittinsky
Todd L. Pittinsky
Affiliation:
Stony Brook University, State University of New York
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Summary

Technologies need users. The machines built from waste materials, salvaged metal, and discarded clothing by the Swiss artist Jean Tinguely may be the only machines intended explicitly not to be used or produce anything. Inspired by Dadaism and the anticapitalist movement of the early 1960s, Tinguely aimed to “free machines” from their “slavery” in the mass production of consumer goods (Menil & Alexandre, 1980). These machines were made to disrupt the static presentation of art in conventional museums at that time and to destruct rather than produce anything (Stedelijk Museum, 2017).1 However, most machines are intended to produce consumer goods, and both depend on users. It is thus no surprise that users are an important theme in science and technology studies (STS). Criticizing a determinist linear view of technology that portrayed users as passive consumers, STS scholars have convincingly shown that users play an active role in all phases of technological development, from design to implementation and use.

Type
Chapter
Information
Science, Technology, and Society
New Perspectives and Directions
 , pp. 163 - 175
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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