How Users Matter: The Co-Construction of Users and Technology / Edition 1

by Nelly Oudshoorn, Trevor Pinch

Overview

Users have become an integral part of technology studies. The essays in this volume look at the creative capacity of users to shape technology in all phases, from design to implementation. Using a variety of theoretical approaches, including a feminist focus on users and use (in place of the traditional emphasis on men and machines), concepts from semiotics, and the cultural studies view of consumption as a cultural activity, these essays examine what users do with technology and, in turn, what technology does to users. The contributors consider how users consume, modify, domesticate, design, reconfigure, and resist technological development—and how users are defined and transformed by technology.

The essays in part I show that resistance to and non-use of a technology can be a crucial factor in the eventual modification and improvement of that technology; examples considered include the introduction of the telephone into rural America and the influence of non-users of the Internet. The essays in part II look at advocacy groups and the many kinds of users they represent, particularly in the context of health care and clinical testing. The essays in part III examine the role of users in different phases of the design, testing, and selling of technology. Included here is an enlightening account of one company's design process for men's and women's shavers, which resulted in a "Ladyshave" for users assumed to be technophobes. Taken together, the essays in How Users Matter show that any understanding of users must take into consideration the multiplicity of roles they play—and that the conventional distinction between users and producers is largely artificial.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780262651097
Publisher:	MIT Press
Publication date:	08/12/2005
Series:	Inside Technology
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.88(h) x 0.78(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Nelly Oudshoorn is Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the University of Twente in the Netherlands.

Trevor Pinch is Goldwin Smith Professor of Science and Technology Studies at Cornell University and coeditor of The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology (anniversary edition, MIT Press).

Nelly Oudshoorn is Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the University of Twente in the Netherlands.

Trevor Pinch is Goldwin Smith Professor of Science and Technology Studies at Cornell University and coeditor of The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology (anniversary edition, MIT Press).

Sally Wyatt is Program Leader of the e-Humanities Group at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Stuart S. Blume is Professor and Chairman of the Department of Science Dynamics at the University of Amsterdam.

Shobita Parthasarathy is Associate Professor at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan.

Nelly Oudshoorn is Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the University of Twente in the Netherlands.

Johan Schot is a Professor of the History of Technology at the Eindhoven University of Technology.

Trevor Pinch is Goldwin Smith Professor of Science and Technology Studies at Cornell University and coeditor of The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology (anniversary edition, MIT Press).

Table of Contents

	Preface	ix
	Introduction: How Users and Non-Users Matter	1
I	Users and Non-Users as Active Agents in the (De-) Stabilization of Technologies
1	From the Shadows: Users as Designers, Producers, Marketers, Distributors, and Technical Support	29
2	Resisting Consumer Technology in Rural America: The Telephone and Electrification	51
3	Non-Users Also Matter: The Construction of Users and Non-Users of the Internet	67
4	Escape Vehicles? The Internet and the Automobile in a Local-Global Intersection	81
II	Multiple Spokespersons: States and Social Movements as Representatives of Users
5	Citizens as Users of Technology: An Exploratory Study of Vaccines and Vaccination	103
6	Knowledge Is Power: Genetic Testing for Breast Cancer and Patient Activism in the United States and Britain	133
7	Who Represents the Users? Critical Encounters between Women's Health Advocates and Scientists in Contraceptive R&D	151
8	Inclusion, Diversity, and Biomedical Knowledge Making: The Multiple Politics of Representation	173
III	Multiplicity in Locations: Configuring the User during the Design, the Testing, and the Selling of Technologies
9	Materialized Gender: How Shavers Configure the Users' Femininity and Masculinity	193
10	Clinical Trials as a Cultural Niche in Which to Configure the Gender Identities of Users: The Case of Male Contraceptive Development	209
11	The Mediated Design of Products, Consumption, and Consumers in the Twentieth Century	229
12	Giving Birth to New Users: How the Minimoog Was Sold to Rock and Roll	247
	Notes	271
	References	295
	List of Contributors	335
	Index	339

What People are Saying About This

Endorsement

The relationships between technologies and their users are intimate and important. This fine collection of essays will engage readers in fields as diverse as sociology of technology, cultural history, and marketing.

—Donald MacKenzie, School of Social and Political Studies, University of Edinburgh

From the Publisher

The relationships between technologies and their users are intimate and important. This fine collection of essays will engage readers in fields as diverse as sociology of technology, cultural history, and marketing.

—Donald MacKenzie, School of Social and Political Studies, University of Edinburgh

Donald MacKenzie

The relationships between technologies and their users are intimate and important. This fine collection of essays will engage readers in fields as diverse as sociology of technology, cultural history, and marketing.

Editorial Reviews

...An important book that thoughtfully and rigorously draws attention to user-oriented studies of technology.—Ben Schneiderman, American Scientist—

From the Publisher

...An important book that thoughtfully and rigorously draws attention to user-oriented studies of technology.

—Ben Schneiderman, American Scientist

Reviews

...An important book that thoughtfully and rigorously draws attention to user-oriented studies of technology.

American Scientist - Ben Schneiderman