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The sudden experience of the computer

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Abstract

The experience of computer use can be productively articulated with concepts developed in the phenomenological tradition of philosophy. Building on the insights of classical phenomenologists, Ihde has advanced a sophisticated view of the ways humans relate to technology. I review and expand on his notions of “technological mediation,” “embodiment,” and “multistability,” and apply them to the experience of computer interface. In particular, I explore the experience of using a computer that fails to work properly. A revealing example is the experience of a user who suddenly and unexpectedly encounters a slowly-loading webpage while using the Internet. This phenomenological framework provides an account of the ways a suddenly failing technology changes our relationships to the device, to the world, and to ourselves, and it also suggests how this experience can be usefully reconceptualized.

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Notes

  1. This paper builds on thoughts first developed in a short online discussion piece (Rosenberger 2007).

  2. “Postphenomenology” is the term for an emerging school of thought in the philosophy of technology (e.g. Ihde 1993, 2003, 2009; Verbeek 2005, 2006; Hasse 2006; Rosenberger (2008b); Selinger 2009a, b. See also the special issue 31(1) of the Human Studies on the topic of postphenomenology with essays by Cathrine Hasse, Don Ihde, Evan Selinger, Peter-Paul Verbeek, and myself). Postphenomenology builds on the philosophical tradition of phenomenology, but also diverges from it in a few significant ways. For example, postphenomenologists focus on issues of technological mediation, and often conduct concrete empirical case studies. Also, postphenomenology is strongly influenced by the American pragmatic tradition, especially in terms of its basic ontological commitments. With Ihde as postphenomenology’s central proponent, many postphenomenological investigations use his works as a starting point.

    It should be noted that while many of the concepts I review in this essay have been developed throughout Ihde’s corpus, in this paper I cite the versions of them appearing in his work Technology and the Lifeworld (1990).

  3. This paper, and postphenomenological work in general, contributes to the literature on technological mediation (e.g. Ihde 1999; Latour 1994; Verbeek 2005; Kockelkoren 2007). For an extensive analysis of the concept of mediation and its relation to Human–Computer Interaction research, see (Bødker and Anderson 2005).

    This paper shares themes with other works that have considered the applicability of Ihde’s conception of embodiment to our understanding computer use (e.g. Hybs 1996; Fallman 2003, 2007). Further examples of works that explore computer use from a phenomenological perspective include (Winograd and Flores 1986; Winograd 1995; Dreyfus 2001; Banerjee 2004; Suchman 2007). Also, Casper Bruun Jensen’s critical analyses of the practices of “computer supported cooperative work,” though not explicitly phenomenological, raise related issues of technological mediation in computer use (2001).

  4. In addition to “embodiment relations,” Ihde identifies other kinds of relations to technology. For example, in what he calls “hermeneutic relations,” one relates to the world through reading the technology itself, such as reading a thermometer or interpreting a medical image (Ihde 1990, 80). In what he calls “alterity relations,” one relates to the world by interacting with the technology as quazi-other, in some ways similar to how one interacts with another person. Examples include ATM machines and video games (Ihde 1990, 97). Ihde develops this list of kinds of technological relations in part to complicate Heidegger’s account of tools as either useful or broken.

    Also, with all phenomenological accounts, it is important to keep in mind the critiques developed by feminist thinkers that the phenomenological tradition fails to adequately address issues of gender, racial, and cultural differences in its descriptions of human experience. Recent versions of this critique directed at Ihde’s work include (e.g. Eason 2003; Scharff 2006).

  5. Anette Forss’s ethnography of cytology lab work provides a detailed account of the experience of the use of microscopes (Forss 2005). Other examples of insightful accounts of the experience of microscope use are Michael Lynch’s anthropological work and Nicolas Rasmussen’s historical work on electron microscopy (Lynch 1985; Rasmussen 1997).

  6. Here I use the term “stabilities” to refer to the different stable relations that are possible for a multistable technology. It should be noted that Ihde also at times uses the term “variations” for this purpose. This relates to the method of “variational analysis” developed by Edmund Husserl, and furthered by Ihde (Husserl 1970).

  7. I also investigate how bodily habits, conceptualized through this phenomenological perspective, can be applied to computer use in (Rosenberger 2009b). In work on image interpretation in science, I have developed the notion of “hermeneutic strategies,” an idea closely related to the concept of “relational strategies” developed here (Rosenberger 2008a, b, 2009a). Hermeneutic strategies are a subset of relational strategies which refer to the different interpretive frameworks that users bring to multistable images (such as scientific images produced by laboratory technologies).

  8. For work on invisible computing, see e.g. Norman (1998). For ubiquitous computing, see e.g. Weiser (1991) and Russell et al. (2005).

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Acknowledgments

Special thanks to Don Ihde, Annie Roach, and Arun Kumar Tripathi for comments on earlier drafts of this piece.

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  1. Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, USA

    Robert Rosenberger

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  1. Robert Rosenberger
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Correspondence to Robert Rosenberger.

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Rosenberger, R. The sudden experience of the computer. AI & Soc 24, 173–180 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-009-0190-9

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