Website Search
Find information on spaces, staff, and services.
Catalog Search
Books
How artifacts afford : the power and politics of everyday things
- Author / Creator
- Available as
- Online
- Summary
-
"The term "affordances," at least in the design literature, was popularized in Don Norman's The Design of Everyday Things. He brought affordances to design studies to address human-machine interact...
"The term "affordances," at least in the design literature, was popularized in Don Norman's The Design of Everyday Things. He brought affordances to design studies to address human-machine interactions. In recent years, the concept has picked up considerable steam as the study of computer mediated communication (CMC) and information communication technologies (ICTs) have become firmly entrenched in the academic canon. How ArtIfacts Afford is about the social dynamics of technology. It is about the ways that ethics, values, and interests are built into technological objects and how these objects take shape through interaction with human subjects. More specifically, this book is about technological affordances. Formally, affordances are defined as "the 'multifaceted relational structure' between an object/technology and the use that enables or constrains potential behavioral outcomes in a particular context". That is, affordances mediate between the features of a technology and the outcomes of engagement with that technology. Technologies don't make people do things, but instead, push, pull, enable, and constrain. Affordances are how objects shape behavior for socially situated subjects"--
Details
- Creator
- Jenny L. Davis
- Format
- Books
- Language
- English
- Contributors
- Publication
-
- Cambridge, MA : The MIT Press, [2020]
- ©2020
- Physical Details
-
- 1 online resource (124 pages)
- ISBNs
- 0262358883, 0262044110, 9780262358897, 9780262358880, 9780262044110, 0262358891
- OCLC
- on1162569671
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- Cover -- Contents -- Series Foreword -- Acknowledgments -- 1 Introduction -- A Trolley Problem of a Particular Sort -- Affordances -- Operationalizing Affordances: The Mechanisms and Conditions Framework -- How Affordances Matter -- Situating the Text -- Outline of the Book -- 2 A Brief History of Affordances -- Origins in Ecological Psychology -- Affordances Spread -- Objects, Subjects, and Contexts -- Sustained Critiques -- Pathways Forward -- 3 Politics and Power -- The Medium Is the Message: McLuhan on Technologies as Objects of Study
- Actor-Network Theory: Overcoming Technological Determinism -- The Politics of Artifacts -- Technology as Materialized Action: Technological Efficacy and Human Agency -- Chapter Summary -- 4 Mechanisms of Affordance -- Requests and Demands -- Encourage, Discourage, and Refuse -- Allow -- Chapter Summary -- 5 Conditions of Affordance -- Perception -- Dexterity -- Cultural and Institutional Legitimacy -- Chapter Summary -- 6 Affordances in Practice -- Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis -- The Walkthrough Method and App Feature Analysis -- Values Reflection -- Adversarial Design
- Chapter Summary -- 7 Conclusion -- Big Question 1: How Do We Identify and Equalize Digital Inequalities? -- Big Question 2: How Do Social Media Affect Sociality and Psychological Well-being? -- Big Question 3: How Do Information Economies Affect Political Life? -- Big Question 4: How Will Driverless Cars Affect Urban Infrastructures? -- Big Question 5: How Do Medical Technologies Afford Embodied Relations to Health? -- Moving Forward -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index