How Users Matter: The Co-Construction of Users and Technology (Paperback)

Description:

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 Mattershow 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.

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

Trevor Pinch is Professor of Science and Technology Studies and Professor of Sociology at Cornell University.

Table of Contents:

Preface	ix
	Introduction: How Users and Non-Users Matter Nelly Oudshoorn and Trevor Pinch	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 Christina Lindsay	29
2.	Resisting Consumer Technology in Rural America: The Telephone and Electrification Ronald Kline	51
3.	Non-Users Also Matter: The Construction of Users and Non-Users of the Internet Sally Wyatt	67
4.	Escape Vehicles? The Internet and the Automobile in a Local-Global Intersection Anne Sofie Laegran	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 Dale Rose and Stuart S. Blume	103
6.	Knowledge Is Power: Genetic Testing for Breast Cancer and Patient Activism in the United States and Britain Shobita Parthasarathy	133
7	Who Represents the Users? Critical Encounters between Women's Health Advocates and Scientists in Contraceptive R&D Jessika van Kammen	151
8.	Inclusion, Diversity, and Biomedical Knowledge Making: The Multiple Politics of Representation Steven A. Epstein	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 Ellen van Oost	193
10.	Clinical Trials as a Cultural Niche in Which to Configure the Gender Identities of Users: The Case of Male Contraceptive Development Nelly Oudshoorn	209
11.	The Mediated Design of Products, Consumption, and Consumers in the Twentieth Century Johan Schot and Adri Albert de la Bruheze	229
12.	Giving Birth to New Users: How the Minimoog Was Sold to Rock and Roll Trevor Pinch	247
	Notes	271
	References	295
	List of Contributors	335
	Index	339