Postphenomenology

Technology as In-Between

by Stephen Read

in press: Foundations of Science

This commentary on Søren Riis’s paper “Dwelling in-between walls” starts from a position of solidarity with its... more This commentary on Søren Riis’s paper “Dwelling in-between walls” starts from a position of solidarity with its attempt to build a postphenomenological perspective on architecture and the built environment. It proposes however that a clearer view of a technological structure of experience may be obtained by finding technological-perceptual wholes that incorporate perceiver and perceived as well as the mediating apparatus. Parts and wholes may be formed as nested human-technological interiorities that have structured relations with what is outside—so that the outside constitutes an interiority in its turn which contextualises and situates the first. This nested structure raises questions about the way architects and urbanists see the built environment and understand inhabitation. It is hoped that this effort continues with conceptual and empirical work to research ways to make the human places of our built environment.

Technicity and publicness

by Stephen Read

in Footprint 3. Special issue: P.A. Healy & B. O’Byrne (eds.), Phenomenology in Architecture and Urbanism. pp. 7-22

Heidegger’s space, with its emphasis on the disclosure of entities in settings of mutually referring entities, and the... more Heidegger’s space, with its emphasis on the disclosure of entities in settings of mutually referring entities, and the integration of settings and action, requires us to think carefully about issues like the identities and being of people and things and their relations with each other in a realm of plurality. All entities are captured in webs of co-reference which make their relations between themselves and to ourselves a very public matter. These webs themselves are at the same time the very channels by which we know and access all things, and relations of power become built into them which affect the ways we know things and the possibilities we see for acting. This paper explores and reviews issues of technicity, intersubjectivity, and plurality in relation to Heidegger’s thinking, in order to begin the process of outlining an urban space of the settings ‘between men’ for coherence and action, and to define a direction for further research on urban space and place.

The Ethics of Technological Design and Practice. A Post-phenomenological and Grammatical Approach

by Robert Arnautu

draft only

The ethics of technology deals with the moral grounds of creating and using devices and technological systems. This... more The ethics of technology deals with the moral grounds of creating and using devices and technological systems. This paper deals with the ethics of technology from the point of view of postphenomenology – by analysing multistability, mediation and technological intentionality – and of Wittgenstein’s fundamental grammar – by analysing technology as a rule-governed practice. Using these theoretical frameworks, this paper is able to offer a description of the way ethical values are embedded in technology and to present the foundation for a normative ethics of technology.

Body and Technology: Reframing the Humanistic Critique

by Amy Taylor

Architectures of Interaction: An Architectural Perspective on Digital Experience

by Heather Wiltse

Short paper co-authored with Erik Stolterman and presented at NordiCHI 2010

Digital technologies increasingly form the backdrop for our lives, and both provide and shape possibilities for... more Digital technologies increasingly form the backdrop for our lives, and both provide and shape possibilities for interaction. This is a function similar to that of architecture in the physical world. For this reason we suggest that it could be productive to view and critique interactive digital technologies as one might physical architecture: in terms of the possibilities they provide for action, visibility, and interaction. We begin by pointing to the many architectural metaphors that are already common in HCI, and then move on to demonstrate how an architectural perspective can make visible less obvious interactive spaces. Finally, we argue that the potential benefits of this perspective are that it can allow us to see where interactive spaces have been constructed (intentionally or not); think about how particular artifacts and systems interface with each other and with the whole of embodied experience; and link specific design decisions to potential social dynamics.

Technological Other/Quasi Other: Reflection on Lived Experience

by Stacey O'Neal Irwin

Direct Measures: Embedded “authentic” Assessment

by Stacey O'Neal Irwin