The user (a.k.a. the person) is only an entity in a network of relations, connections, and bi-directional arrows. Outside the network, it’s just a nobody.

“The user has become central to the way technology is conceptualized, designed, and studied in sociotechnical research and human-computer interaction; recently, non-users have also become productive foci of scholarly analysis. This paper argues that a focus on individualized users and non-users is incomplete, and conflates multiple modes of complex relation among people, institutions, and technologies. Rather than the use/non-use conception, I argue for conceptualizing users as networks: as constellations of power relations and institutional entanglements, mediated through technologies.”

Karen E.C. Levy a.k.a. @karen_ec_levy ~ First Monday 20.11 ★