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Technology as Experience
Book

Technology as Experience

MIT Press, 2007
First Edition: 2004 更多详情

自动生成的音频
自动生成的音频

Editorial Rating

5

Qualities

  • Innovative

Recommendation

John McCarthy’s and Peter Wright’s book is fascinating because they grapple with some of today’s major social, economic and interpersonal questions, such as what does technology mean and how can you determine its meaning? The authors move through several philosophical approaches that they find useful in framing these questions, review major thinkers in the field, and discuss case studies and personal experiences before reaching conclusions. The book is difficult, because of their academic bent. They are willing to break with existing practices enough to embrace emotional and subjective reactions to technology, but their writing can be thick and their conceptual apparatus is complex. As a result, the content is useful for futurists, those interested in social trends and change, and anyone working in information technology or marketing. However, getAbstract recommends their prose primarily to the more patient members of those categories.

Summary

Making Sense of Living with Technology

You don’t just use technology: You live with it every day; it is integrated into everything you do. You might like this intimate engagement with technology when you get a cell phone call from a distant friend. You might hate it when you have to move away from helping people – your real job, as you see it – to face yet another computer screen. But what does it mean and how can you make sense of technology’s role in human life? To answer, go beyond examining what a specific system or object was designed to do. Instead, try to make sense of the “felt” experience, the way people become emotionally involved with technology and machines.

This challenge has undergone a historical progression. In the’70s, computer usage was straightforward: usually, one person used one machine. The ’80s emphasized performance and interconnection, as people interacted via computer. In the ’90s, consumer use of computers grew, so manufacturers had to make the technological experience as “rich” as possible. Philosophy offers a variety of conceptual approaches for understanding this “human-computer interaction.” These include rationalism, pragmatism, ethnography...

About the Authors

John McCarthy is a senior lecturer at University College in Cork. Peter Wright is a senior lecturer at the University of York.


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