Toward a Constructive Technology Criticism

In this report, the author draws on interviews with journalists and critics, as well as a broad reading of published work, to assess the current state of technology coverage and criticism in the popular discourse, and to offer some thoughts on how to move the critical enterprise forward. Tow Fellow Sara Watson finds that what it means to cover technology is a moving target. Today, the technology beat focuses less on the technology itself and more on how technology intersects with and transforms everything readers care about—from politics to personal relationships. But as technology coverage matures, the distinctions between reporting and criticism are blurring. Even the most straightforward reporting plays a role in guiding public attention and setting agendas. Further, she finds that technology criticism is too narrowly defined. First, criticism carries negative connotations—that of criticizing with unfavorable opinions rather than critiquing to offer context and interpretation. Strongly associated with notions of progress, technology criticism today skews negative and nihilistic. Second, much of the criticism coming from people widely recognized as “critics” perpetuates these negative associations by employing problematic styles and tactics, and by exercising unreflexive assumptions and ideologies. As a result, many journalists and bloggers are reluctant to associate their work with criticism or identify themselves as critics. And yet she finds a larger circle of journalists, bloggers, academics, and critics contributing to the public discourse about technology and addressing important questions by applying a variety of critical lenses to their work. Some of the most novel critiques about technology and Silicon Valley are coming from women and underrepresented minorities, but their work is seldom recognized in traditional critical venues. As a result, readers may miss much of the critical discourse about technology if they focus only on the work of a few, outspoken intellectuals. Even if a wider set of contributions to the technology discourse is acknowledged, she finds that technology criticism still lacks a clearly articulated, constructive agenda. Besides deconstructing, naming, and interpreting technological phenomena, criticism has the potential to assemble new insights and interpretations. In response to this finding, she lays out the elements of a constructive technology criticism that aims to bring stakeholders together in productive conversation rather than pitting them against each other. Constructive criticism poses alternative possibilities. It skews toward optimism, or at least toward an idea that future technological societies could be improved. Acknowledging the realities of society and culture, constructive criticism offers readers the tools and framings for thinking about their relationship to technology and their relationship to power. Beyond intellectual arguments, constructive criticism is embodied, practical, and accessible, and it offers frameworks for living with technology

An Explorative Approach to Interaction Design in Mixed-Reality Performances

Digital media have become an important element in performing arts. Artists and audience can interweave their actions on stage with digital content as they perform with and through responding interfaces. This co-play can extend the narrative and aesthetic possibilities of storytelling. However, digital media is still not well understood as a means for dramaturgy. As directors are exposed to many challenges and difficulties when combining live performance with digital elements, technicians at the same time have to learn about the theatrical frame. This dissertation aims at the development of a fundamental understanding of dramaturgical interaction design as well as at the creation of new theatrical experiences. The major research question is whether there are general criteria that can guide the design of interactive storytelling in participatory settings. Approaching this question, this work is structured into two parts. First, I examine how the inclusion of media and technology has reconfigured traditional means of storytelling during the last decades. The dramaturgical potential of digital media is presented and the most important design challenges for performative works at the intersection of HCI, interaction design, and the performing arts are discussed. Second, I describe the design of the two participatory mixed-reality performances Parcival XX-XI and Operation:Parcival . Their evaluation reveals different audience reactions concerning its involvement in these plays and the use of digital media. Based on these specific results, we develop in a more general manner the four major performance components of participatory mixed-reality shows mixed media, spectatorship, limitations, and timing as well as the four interaction-enabling criteria interest, ability, experience, and sharing. Using the findings from these two plays, we finally outline a methodology for dramaturgical interaction design

Co-Creativity and Engaged Scholarship

This open access book explores creative and collaborative forms of research praxis within the social sustainability sciences. The term co-creativity is used in reference to both individual methods and overarching research approaches. Supported by a series of in-depth examples, the edited collection critically reviews the potential of co-creative research praxis to nurture just and transformative processes of change. Included amongst the individual chapters are first-hand accounts of such as: militant research strategies and guerrilla narrative, decolonial participative approaches, appreciative inquiry and care-ethics, deep-mapping, photo-voice, community-arts, digital participatory mapping, creative workshops and living labs. The collection considers how, through socially inclusive forms of action and reflection, such co-creative methods can be used to stimulate alternative understandings of why and how things are, and how they could be. It provides illustrations of (and problematizes) the use of co-creative methods as overtly disruptive interventions in their own right, and as a means of enriching the transformative potential of transdisciplinary and more traditional forms of social science research inquiry. The positionality of the researcher, together with the emotional and embodied dimensions of engaged scholarship, are threads which run throughout the book. So too does the question of how to communicate sustainability science research in a meaningful way