Not The Internet, but This Internet: How Othernets Illuminate Our Feudal Internet

What is the Internet like, and how do we know? Less tendentiously, how can we make general statements about the Internet without reference to alternatives that help us to understand what the space of network design possibilities might be? This paper presents a series of cases of network alternatives which provide a vantage point from which to reflect upon the ways that the Internet does or does not uphold both its own design goals and our collective imaginings of what it does and how. The goal is to provide a framework for understanding how technologies embody promises, and how these both come to evolve.

Mobile technologies and the spatiotemporal configurations of institutional practice

One of the most significant contemporary technological trends is institutional adoption and use of mobile and location-based systems and services. We argue that the notion of “location” as it manifests itself in location-based systems is being produced as an object of exchange. Here we are specifically concerned with what happens to institutional roles, power relationships, and decision-making processes when a particular type of information—that of spatiotemporal location of people—is made into a technologically tradable object through the use of location-based systems. We examine the introduction of GPS (Global Positioning Systems) technologies by the California criminal justice system and the institution of parole for monitoring the movements of parolees, with consequences both for the everyday lives of these parolees and the work practices of their parole officers. We document the ways in which broad adoption of location-based and mobile technologies has the capacity to radically reconfigure the spatiotemporal arrangement of institutional processes. The presence of digital location traces creates new forms of institutional accountability, facilitates a shift in the understood relation between location and action, and necessitates new models of interpretation and sense making in practice

Aesthetic Journeys

Researchers and designers are increasingly creating technologies intended to support urban mobility. However, the question of what mobility is remains largely under-examined. In this paper we will use the notion of aesthetic journeys to reconsider the relationship between urban spaces, people and technologies. Fieldwork on the Orange County bus system and in the London Underground leads to a discussion of how we might begin to design for multiple mobilities

What matters to older people with assisted living needs? A phenomenological analysis of the use and non-use of telehealth and telecare

Telehealth and telecare research has been dominated by efficacy trials. The field lacks a sophisticated theorisation of [a] what matters to older people with assisted living needs; [b] how illness affects people's capacity to use technologies; and [c] the materiality of assistive technologies. We sought to develop a phenomenologically and socio-materially informed theoretical model of assistive technology use. Forty people aged 60–98 (recruited via NHS, social care and third sector) were visited at home several times in 2011–13. Using ethnographic methods, we built a detailed picture of participants' lives, illness experiences and use (or non-use) of technologies. Data were analysed phenomenologically, drawing on the work of Heidegger, and contextualised using a structuration approach with reference to Bourdieu's notions of habitus and field. We found that participants' needs were diverse and unique. Each had multiple, mutually reinforcing impairments (e.g. tremor and visual loss and stiff hands) that were steadily worsening, culturally framed and bound up with the prospect of decline and death. They managed these conditions subjectively and experientially, appropriating or adapting technologies so as to enhance their capacity to sense and act on their world. Installed assistive technologies met few participants' needs; some devices had been abandoned and a few deliberately disabled. Successful technology arrangements were often characterised by ‘bricolage’ (pragmatic customisation, combining new with legacy devices) by the participant or someone who knew and cared about them. With few exceptions, the current generation of so-called ‘assisted living technologies’ does not assist people to live with illness. To overcome this irony, technology providers need to move beyond the goal of representing technology users informationally (e.g. as biometric data) to providing flexible components from which individuals and their carers can ‘think with things’ to improve the situated, lived experience of multi-morbidity. A radical revision of assistive technology design policy may be needed

Maker Movements, Do-It-Yourself Cultures and Participatory Design: Implications for HCI Research

Falling costs and the wider availability of computational components, platforms and ecosystems have enabled the expansion of maker movements and DIY cultures. This can be considered as a form of democratization of technology systems design, in alignment with the aims of Participatory Design approaches. However, this landscape is constantly evolving, and long-term implications for the HCI community are far from clear. The organizers of this one-day workshop invite participants to present their case studies, experiences and perspectives on the topic with the goal of increasing understanding within this area of research. The outcomes of the workshop will include the articulation of future research directions with the purpose of informing a research agenda, as well as the establishment of new collaborations and networks

Follow the Money: Managing Personal Finance Digitally

The move towards digital payments and mobile money, and away from physical cash and banking services offers users opportunities to change the ways that they can spend, save and manage their money through a variety of personal financial management services. However, set against ordinary, everyday patterns of spending, saving and other forms of financial transaction, it is not clear how users might interact with, understand, or value financial management services that utilise rich data and connected digital content for their personal use. In order to explore how people might engage with such systems, we conducted a study of financial activity, following people’s transactional activity over time, and interviewing them about their practices, understandings, needs, concerns and expectations of current and future financial technologies. Drawing from the everyday activities and practices observed, we identify implications for the design of digitally enabled, personal financial systems

Beyond the Grave: Facebook as a Site for the Expansion of Death and Mourning.

Online identities survive the deaths of those they represent, leaving friends and families to struggle with the appropriate ways to incorporate these identities into the practices of grief and mourning, raising important questions. How are practices of online memorialization connected to conventional rituals of grief and mourning? What is the role of online digital identity postmortem? How do trajectories of death and dying incorporate both online and offline concerns? Based on our qualitative study of death and mourning online, we identify the way that social networking sites enable expansion-temporally, spatially, and socially-of public mourning. Rather than looking at online practices as disruptions of traditional practices of grief and memorialization, we examine them as new sites in which public mourning takes place. Keywords death, dying, bereavement, social network sites, Facebook In the few short years since its launch, Facebook has permeated the daily lives of its users. More than just a space where one can craft an online profile or connect with other users, Facebook is a space where one can share the details of one's life, from the mundane ("Joe is enjoying his morning coffee") to the monumental ("Joe is engaged"). As Facebook has become further integrated into both the everyday and major events of our lives, and its user base has become both larger and more diverse, practices surrounding death have likewise begun to emerge. c Jed R. Brubaker, Gillian R. Hayes, and Paul Dourish We are grateful to all of those who participated in this study. We are also grateful to Margarita Rayzberg, Lynn Dombrowski, Ellie Harmon, and Sen Hirano, who provided feedback during the writing of this piece. This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under EAGER number 1042678. Address correspondence to Jed R. Brubaker, Department of Informatics, Donald Bren Hall 5042, Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697-3440, USA. Web: http://www.jedbrubaker.com; E-mail: jed. [email protected] While existing work has documented how bereaved users reappropriate social network sites (SNSs) to memorialize the dead postmortem (e.g., Brubaker and Hayes 2011; Carroll and Landry 2010; DeGroot 2008), in this article we adopt a perimortem perspective and turn our attention to the experiences of users during the time surrounding death. Specifically, we consider the ways in which Facebook is associated with an expansion of death-related experiences-temporally, spatially, and socially. Facebook creates a new setting for death and grieving-one that is broadly public with an ongoing integration into daily life. Critically, this is not simply about death, but about the trajectories of social engagement around death-in preparation, at the moment of passing, in the discovery of the death of a friend, and in the ongoing memorialization and grieving. In this article, we present findings from interviews conducted during an ongoing study of death in the context of SNSs. Based on an analysis of qualitative data from interviews with sixteen Facebook users, we highlight the role of Facebook in learning about the death of a friend, providing a mediated space for grieving and remembrance, and participating in an expanding set of death-and griefrelated practices. This article is structured as follows: We first provide background from the field of death and dying. We then review related literature focused on online systems and death-including collaborative systems, cybermemorials, and SNSs. We then describe our methods and results of this study. We close with a discussion of the relationship between SNS activities and the evolving ecology of deathrelated practices in which Facebook is situated. RELATED WORK The American Way of Death Cultural beliefs are deeply embedded within human experiences of grief and practices around death. Kastenbau

From interaction to performance with public displays

Abstract Interacting with public displays involves more than what happens between individuals and the system; it also concerns how people experience others around and through those displays. In this paper, we use ''performance'' as an analytical lens for understanding experiences with a public display called rhythIMs and explore how displays shift social interaction through their mediation. By performance, we refer to a situation in which people are on display and orient themselves toward an audience that may be co-located, imagined, or virtual. To understand interaction with public displays, we use two related notions of collectives-audiences and groups-to highlight the ways in which people orient to each other through public displays. Drawing examples from rhythIMs, a public display that shows patterns of instant messaging and physical presence, we demonstrate that there can be multiple, heterogeneous audiences and show how people experience these different types of collectives in various ways. By taking a performance perspective, we are able to understand how audiences that were not physically co-present with participants still influenced participants' interpretations and interactions with rhythIMs. This extension of the traditional notion of audience illuminates the roles audiences can play in a performance

College Students, Technology, and Time

Our research explores CUNY students’ lived experiences using digital technology in and out of class, on and off campus. Beyond checking grades or emailing a professor, students use digital technology to create space and time for their schoolwork. However, technology can also impede students’ opportunities for making space and time. Understanding how students use digital technology is crucial for colleges and universities to better support students in their academic work