Abstract
Users of mobile phones, computers and other digital media devices are increasingly confronted with what Lessig calls ‘architectural control’. This article presents results from a study which reveals that users adopt four tactics in negotiating architectural control: modifying use, modifying the technology, decreasing use and acceptance. Users consent in two ways: by internalizing control through incorporating architectural constraints into their embodied practice, and by responding to the convenience of architectural controls and the complexity of far-flung collective digital systems. Thus it is argued that modification and adaptation in everyday practices of digital media and information communication technologies (ICTs) is a type of consent rather than resistance to digital control.
Keywords
Digital control as architectural control
The technological specificity of digital code means that there is no one task designed for a computer: it can take on anything that can be programmed. As microprocessing capacity increases, digital devices greatly increase their capacity for additional functions. Computer users are confronted by ever more digital obstacles, as code has the power to layer commands constricting use beyond the main purpose of the program. These can be in-built, attached to installed applications, or programmed remotely through networked interactions. For example, various forms of DRM (digital rights management) prevent non-sanctioned uses. The workings of these and other forms of control are obscured as they operate at the level of programming of which the average user has little understanding. Lessig (1999, 2002, 2004) calls this type of control ‘architectural’, likening it to the constraints a driver faces when encountering a fence; digital code can likewise constrain the user of an application if virtual fences have been programmed into a device, such as password protection. This control can be manipulated, but only in the way one would manipulate a physical architectural control, for instance by climbing a fence. Galloway (2004) has argued that digital protocol – the rules computers follow to communicate – is the form of control characteristic of a control society. Both suggest that control is no longer merely interpretive, based on cultural norms, parliamentary debate and law, but also digital, based on pathways designated by binary code.
Architectural control is an inescapable feature of digital technology. All digital code, by choosing to enable interaction in a particular manner, closes off interaction that might have occurred in another way. A GUI (graphical user interface) closes off the transparency of command lines seen with DOS (disc operating system), just as the desktop metaphor denies the existence of other metaphors (Johnson, 1997). Some form of control is necessary, just as the walls that support a house, but the shape of those virtual walls is rife with implications of power. At their most basic level, such controls shape the type of interaction possible with the given application or device.
All technologies allow particular opportunities and deny others – what Norman (1988) calls affordances, specified by Hartson (2003) into three distinct types. Functional affordances enable a user to accomplish something with a technology, such as making a phone call. Physical affordances such as the shape of a keyboard make up the interface of a device and the interaction with it, while cognitive affordances refer to the comprehensibility of the various parts of an interface, such as the clarity of what an icon means on-screen. 1
Our previous research has found that two additional affordances exist for digital technologies: maintenance affordances, the extent to which a user can count on the reliability or cooperativeness of a technology; and contextual affordances, the abilities granted by the context of use (such as the ability to use it how one wants) (Best, 2009). Increasingly, these affordances become ‘features’ of devices and programs. Such ‘feature creep’ can often be a sign of design processes which undervalue the capabilities of users, as Rose (2003) discusses. Thus, power dynamics underlie the continuum of architectural control that underwrites digital devices which subject the user to varying degrees of control, from overt control to attempts to accommodate for perceived user ignorance or ineptitude.
Madell and Muncer (2007) have found control to be an integral variable in their studies of mobile phone use. Wang et al. (2007) have discussed a framework of attitudes towards ICTs: sense of benefit, sense of harm and sense of dependence. While some studies have shown users to consider themselves to be in control even when they are not (Matute et al., 2007), others have found technologies to be ‘in a role of superiority over the user’ (Leonardi, 2003: 170).
For several philosophers, the type of control pervasive in an information society can only be met by the tactics of resistance which can be gleaned from within everyday practice. Resistance to the microphysics of power was de Certeau’s (1984) main aim in counteracting the governance model of Foucault’s conception of power – which de Certeau argues can be overcome by donning a disguise, la perruque, or using other tactical evasions of everyday control and its repercussions.
Scripts and specificity, adaptation and fluidity
Technologies have a lifespan over which they mutate and evolve, are domesticated and abandoned (Bakardjieva, 2005; Lehtonen, 2003). Technological change and adoption are both technical and organizational-cultural processes that interact. The design of a technology creates a machinic nodality which is pointed in a particular direction: the intentionality of design makes some purposes more convenient than others – artefacts have politics (Winner, 1980), are biased (Martin, 2001) and value-laden (Feenberg, 2003). They privilege certain liberties of action and multistable possibilities (Ihde, 1990) over others. As Latour (1988) has illustrated, technologies are assemblages of delegation. Power is delegated from the designer to the code, to the hardware that carries out the code, and controlled by scripts which motivate the delegated task, codifying how and what acts must be carried out. Users of technology are inscribed into this network at the moment of their use. Technological scripts interpellate us, channelling us through the automatic door at a particular rate, slowing our car down as we pass over the speed bump, and so on (Latour, 1988). Ongoing discourse and persuasion make some uses appear more attractive or inevitable than others. Technologies are the sites of ambivalence, not neutrality, scenes of struggle between multiple interests (Feenberg, 1999), and actors (Callon, 1986).
Feenberg (1995) calls this ‘paralogic legitimation’. Further, usage and modification produce fluid sacs of technologies rather than discrete objects. There is always slippage, unintended consequences, other uses and user manipulation (MacKenzie and Wajcman, 1985). There is also always the possibility for both the conscious persuasion of the development process and afterwards of its use process – in the case of digital control, civil liberties groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The origin is not everything, therefore – technology language wars continue (Lewis and Best, 2003) – but it is something. The possibilities for change lie in a tension between the technological specificity and its scripts on one hand, and the undetermined process of social construction on the other. Technological codes become more important, however, as the technology becomes defined. After an initial struggle, both the telephone and television settled down into place. The radio became a one-way broadcast medium. Change atrophies and technologies firm up.
Ongoing struggle does happen, but is limited due to the distribution of capacities in space. Feenberg argues that dominant (designers, technical personnel) and subject (user) positions exist, but ironically, ‘masters’ understand less about the consequences of technology than users who ‘encounter technology’, for ‘as subordinate actors, they strive to appropriate the technologies … to the meanings that illuminate their lives’ (1999: x). Further, because of the nature of long networks that gather up and assemble technologies (Wise, 1997), the power of dominant actors is not determined because they must constantly delegate to further actors in the network – not only designers, developers and programmers, but also pieces of hardware, cables and connections. Rose (2003) argues, we shouldn’t think of users as disempowered, rather not totally empowered. We can’t get rid of technology, but we can find responsible strategies to exert our power in our interactions with it. What are these strategies that people use with digital media, and how can we understand them? Is Rose’s argument, reminiscent of Fiske’s (1989) cultural populism, too optimistic about people’s resistance capabilities?
The possibility for change comes from within technological culture (Ihde, 2001) and embodied users. Even though there is unequal power, it is with users that technological meaning lies (Feenberg, 1999). Users respond to the ways in which long networks of technology seek to inscribe them in their scripts either by subscribing or de-inscribing. It is in de-inscribing, or partially subscribing, that resistance happens. Thus the question of consent, even in an age of digital control, is still important. Users have choice over the uses and modifications they make to their technologies, and how they heed its electronic calls.
We are left with questions: Is consent negotiated (Hall, 1980), hegemonic (Gramsci, 1971) or participatory (Poster, 1991)? How does it operate with respect to control? When and under what circumstances do users adapt to, or adapt technology? What strategies do they use, how do these correspond with negative and positive experiences of control, and are these strategies resistance or merely trade-offs made in agency?
Research design and technological dialogue
This study tabulated and analysed the strategies of 38 users of digital technologies – mobile phones, desktop and laptop computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and MP3 players. Respondents were recruited through face-to-face and snowball method sampling, from a variety of locations throughout the Ottawa-Gatineau region of Ontario, Canada, and were selected to fit a range of ethnic, socio-cultural and technological proficiency profiles. Eighteen women and 20 men were interviewed, with incomes ranging from negligible to $100,000CAD per annum, and ages ranging from 18 to 65.
Respondents were interviewed for between two and three hours, using a semi-directed style of questioning, the interviews taking place between 2005 and 2007. Interviews were recorded, transcribed and coded using NVivo software. Interviewers asked respondents to describe various aspects of their interactions with each device they owned, and then consider broader themes concerning questions of control. Any form of digital constraint the user encountered was probed, including issues to do with the hardware, software, interface, functioning, comprehensibility and aesthetics of each device, even if the user did not perceive their reactions as pertaining to constraints. Any difficulties users had with the technology were also probed, to determine what action they took to overcome the issue. Finally, any alterations, or adaptations made to the technology were probed. The underlying motivations for all modifications were determined through follow-up questions.
Interviews were then analysed in their entirety and any response which indicated a strategy of any sort on the part of the user to adapt to, modify, or consent to the inscriptions inherent in the technology were selected and sorted into a database. These strategies were coded into categories, using two coders for inter-coder reliability. 2 First, individual strategies were determined and categorized, and then grouped into broad approaches. Each response was coded for only one strategy (Table 1).
Numbers in percent, rounded to the nearest 5%.
Second, the motivations underlying each strategy were coded: the reason which prompted the user to adapt their behaviours or the technology. Here, strategies were able to be multi-coded, as there were often several motivating factors underlying the decision to adopt one strategy over another. These last two coding strategies were emergent, rising from the data in relation to discernible patterns. Finally, motivations were grouped into broader functional strategies, and the entire data set was coded, numbers were converted into percentages and rounded to the nearest 5 percent (Table 2).
Numbers in percent, rounded to the nearest 5%.
1: n = 73
2: n = 48
3: n = 66
4: n = 66
5: The term collective here refers to the way in which technologies are assemblages as part of larger networks of use, including technological assemblages of parts and components (‘technical collective’), bodily accoutrements (‘personal collective’), and larger system-based networks of power supply, authority and design (‘system collective’).
Given the interpretive and qualitative nature of this analysis, the frequency of responses fitting each category, broken down into rough percentages, should be taken as a heuristic tool used to guide the search for general trends and contrasts among different strategic approaches adopted by users, rather than used for strict numeric value.
Findings: strategies and adaptations in dialogic interaction with technology
Respondents used four main approaches in adapting and modifying their ongoing interactions with technology. Users modified their own use, including adapting their everyday practice and habits; caretaking the technology; or working around problems. Users also modified the technology itself, either the physical device or the software. At other times, users decreased their use or replaced the technology, or, as a last resort, consented to the embedded scripts through self-discipline, self-blame or acceptance.
Modifying use: incorporating new habits, embodied skills and ways of making do
The first broad approach, which users reported in approximately 30 percent of their responses, was to modify their use of the technology, allowing users to compensate for inadequacies of the physical, cognitive and functional affordances their devices provided. Users described developing new habits as one such strategy. For instance, Angela tried to offset her phone’s lack of fit to the size of her fingers by writing short messages using one finger. Edgar had to adjust his armament of appendages and devices on his person to suit his PDA by carrying a backpack everywhere as a matter of course.
Many users also developed specific habits in order to minimize public humiliation, or cultural glare, caused by their device. Several respondents described monitoring the volume level and location of cell phone conversations in designing specific codes of conduct; MC for instance never used her phone on the bus, but found it acceptable to use while waiting in line or disembarking: ‘because it was like more of an open space, like outside’. Susan would not only answer her phone quickly when it rang, but would turn down her ringtone, even if it meant she couldn’t hear it.
More drastically, users described contorting their use, including their bodies, postures and physical demeanours. Nicole, for example, would have to ‘go out in the back yard’, due to the poor phone signal.
Sometimes users avoided doing something altogether. This was particularly the case when users doubted their device’s maintenance affordances. Crashing was an often-repeated fear. Vusi restricted his PDA use because of frequent loss of data. Architectural controls also prompted caution through avoidance. For instance, Sheila avoided changing anything that was ‘too ingrained’.
The looming threat of power failures was a focus of attention and careful planning. Both time and place were subject to modification in order to look after the power requirements of technology. Constantly keeping an eye on battery power was a common theme for mobile phones, PDAs and MP3 players. May, for instance, would not only recharge her mobile phone battery often, but made sure she kept one recharger at home and one in the car: ‘so I’m always with something … when it dies on me, that’s [distressed tone] such a bad feeling’. Pierre would make sure to turn off the monitor when not using the computer to prevent it from overheating, while Stephanie continuously cleared excess files off her computer to help improve speed. Using these technologies thus encouraged a trained vigilance in order to accommodate their mercurial maintenance needs.
Some respondents adopted caretaking strategies to accommodate ageing and faulty devices. Caretaking the technology subverts the master–slave assumption that, as Wise (1997) points out, underpins much of the sociology of technology, from either a social-constructionist or a technological determinist point of view. It suggests a nurturing, nurse-like relationship, where users struggle to maintain the electronic pulse of their devices and keep entropy at bay. Jeff’s programmable keyboard meant he constantly needed ‘the instructions on how to get it back to the default setting, and that was very frustrating’.
Other times, users demonstrated a de Certeau-ian ‘art of making do,’ by working around controls and constraints embedded in the technology. This is most obvious in the case of architectural controls put in place to constrain user interaction. Sebastian worked around DRM restrictions by converting Windows media into a different format in order to play a protected song on an unauthorized computer. In order to avoid the architectural control of auto-formatting features in Microsoft Word, a common irritation among respondents, Andrew and his wife made it a point to work around the automatism using a series of shrewd but protracted strategic moves: We use the ‘undo’ feature a lot to go backwards … knowing that certain actions will produce an auto-format feature, we try and work around them, so we’ll add a whole bunch of ‘enters’ when first we start typing up a new document so that maybe half the page is already carriage returns.
Respondents also adopted work-around strategies to evade what were seen as time-consuming demands made by technological scripts. Pierre and Matt both ignored the prompts to send reports or upgrade to a new version, while Ian evaded time-consuming subscription procedures for websites by donning a de Certeau-ian disguise – using shared username and password information provided by bugmenot.com.
Working around restrictions is also evident in users’ desire to make up for inadequacies in the cognitive, physical or functional affordances of their device. Dylan, for instance, unable to understand the ‘merge’ function on Quark, worked around the problem by trial and error: ‘Sometimes you can’t find the one that you need and you have to start all over and try something completely different.’ Ian copes with his phone’s cumbersome method of accessing his list of contacts by searching for uncommon strings of letters.
These findings support theories of the social construction of technology which emphasize users’ active role in shaping technological use – but only to a point, as technological scripts reassert themselves continuously throughout the dialogue, guiding users according to their own architectural constraints a lot of the time.
In choosing from among these specific strategies to modify their own use, users were often motivated by the causal features of their interaction with the technology. Between 60 and 90 percent of users would have been impeded in their use of the device if they had not adopted a strategy, with work-around and caretaking strategies most heavily influenced by functional affordances. Problems with the physical or cognitive interface were also motivators, particularly in developing new habits and work-around strategies.
The collective nature of technology played an interesting role in motivating a degree of change – that is, the way in which technologies are always part of larger networks of use, including bodily accoutrements, technological assemblages of parts and components, and larger system-based networks of power supply, authority and design. The first of these, the personal body space surrounding the user, motivated respondents to modify their everyday uses. Technologies are also part of much broader collective structures, described by actor-network theory as long networks, potentially causing problems to do with reception, connection and programming decisions which are far beyond the power of user’s control. The technology’s system collective was a motivator for work-around strategies, when users were forced to ‘make do’ in the light of the system’s intransigent power.
Interestingly, although adjusting practice through habits, avoidance and contorting usage often involved a significant trade-off or loss on the part of the user, respondents expressed very few feelings of lack of control when discussing their adoption of these strategies; approximately 80 percent of such strategies entailed some sort of loss or trade-off, but only 35 percent of respondents voiced a feeling of loss of control. Thus, although they actually lost a good deal of control over the technology in accommodating its agency, these users did not experience this lack of control in any meaningful way. In contrast, when discussing the adoption of caretaking or work-around strategies, approximately two-thirds of respondents expressed loss of control, voicing feelings of mistrust, insecurity, fear and frustration. Consider the impact of caretaking technology as a strategy in May’s fear because to have her phone die is ‘such a bad feeling’.
Caretaking and work-around strategies elicited the most pronounced feelings of loss of command, even though caretaking strategies did not elicit as significant an actual loss of control or trade-off as users who were required to adopt at times inconvenient habits to satisfy the technological scripts. About half of responses indicated a loss or trade-off had taken place in adopting a caretaking strategy, compared with 80 percent of users choosing to adjust their practice.
The difference might be attributable to the fact that users reported experiencing a greater desire for control over their technologies when adopting caretaking or work-around strategies, as compared to adjusting practice. Perhaps even more significantly, both caretaking and work-around strategies involve an ongoing interaction with the technology to maintain the strategy. This sometimes generated an ever-present reminder of users’ own ongoing efforts in the uphill battle to gain control, nagging at them every time they adopted the strategy.
Modifying the device: a source of empowerment or frustration
Designers increasingly acknowledge that user-driven modifications are becoming more widespread (Hartson, 2003), and are factoring this into new products. The design challenge of the last decade has been providing tools ‘that direct our activity, but feel enabling rather than restricting’ (Karat et al., 2000).
In approximately 20 percent of respondents’ comments, users modified their device. This strategy can be divided into two categories: modifications made in order to accommodate failings in the technology’s affordances, and modifications made in order to satisfy the user’s needs.
Modifications were sometimes made in order to improve a user’s cognitive interaction with the technology. Mireille, rather than adapt to the new cognitive affordances of upgraded software, had her husband help her modify the menu and toolbar on Windows XP to maintain the settings from the previous edition because she was ‘more comfortable’ with it.
More commonly, respondents tailored their devices for aesthetic reasons, or to minimize cultural glare. Many users reported customizing the background, wallpaper, or screensaver on their devices. Personalizing the aesthetic and spatial dimensions of the technology often acted as an important way of colonizing a private relationship with the technology, as Susan illustrates: ‘It was a nice, private domain that … I had a pretty intimate connection with.’ Almost as popular was modifying the aural feedback, particularly to change default ringtones. In general, respondents describe pleasure at being able to customize their devices, and their ability to control this customization: Matt proclaims ‘My computer has the settings I enjoy.’
Another manifestation of the strategy to modify lay in training devices to perform desired functions. Time saving was a particular motivator in this instance. Cristina and Pierre trained the voice recognition on their phones to save time. Although this was a cumbersome process, it was a trade-off they were willing to make because, as Pierre says, ‘once it’s done, you never have to do it again’. Other performance enhancers included: entering contacts in the phone to save time; stripping unnecessary programs to make a device run more smoothly; installing synchronizing software, more RAM or a second hard drive; or even just cleaning the screen frequently. All of these strategies elicited positive emotions and feelings of control over the technology.
Users were less enthusiastic about modifying a device in order to compensate for its faults. Sebastian modified his MP3 player with masking tape to prevent the battery compartment which was: ‘not well-made. [Disgruntled tone] … you shouldn’t have to do that for something you paid two hundred bucks for’. Cristina expressed frustration at having to buy a new case because her flip phone kept opening.
Making changes to overcome cultural glare caused by a device was also met with negativity, and often involved high trade-offs. Angela, for instance, would turn off her phone to stop its ringing because she found it annoying, but was left without a phone because of this.
Most noteworthy in these responses is that the physical or cognitive interface acts as a motivating factor a great deal of the time in users’ adoption of this strategy; approximately 70 percent of the time for both positively and negatively inspired modifications to the technology. When communication breaks down, the desire to improve these traditional aspects of user-friendliness prompts respondents to tackle the process of altering settings, changing interface components, and upgrading device software and hardware.
When there was a greater functional need for modification, responses were somewhat more negative. Overall, however, and particularly when the tailoring was voluntary, users experienced control rather than lack of it.
Decreasing use or replacement as a strategy
Respondents described decreasing their use over time, ceasing to engage only with the troublesome aspects or eschewing the technology altogether. At other times, respondents replaced the device or the program.
The verbal and textual interface between user and technology that enables the transference of commands, assuming a common mode of communication, was often at issue. Several users opted not to use the voice recognition feature of their phones due to poor functioning. Kyla said: ‘it was easier just to dial than to get it to understand.’ Handwriting recognition was also a weak link in a device’s ability to understand a user, and Anne for example decreased use of her PDA for this reason.
Other users decreased their use due to poor memory – particularly a problem with PDAs. Vusi used to keep his PDA synchronized with his computer, but stopped because his data was repeatedly cleared when the memory on his PDA failed. Speed was also a reason users decreased their interactions with a technology or one of its programs. For example Kyla used computers at the library which were quicker than at home.
Users also reported decreasing their use due to frustration or confusion with the interface. Mireille, found it incredibly frustrating to use a computer because she could not map out the spatial and functional relationships of it sufficiently to put her at ease, increasingly put off doing things on the computer, and suffered the loss of the information access to the web provides. She said when she got frustrated she would ‘tend to postpone, procrastinate, or not do it at all [sheepish laugh]’.
[Frustrated tone] It’s partly trial and error and partly: ‘Okay, let’s call Aunt such. Oh, let’s ask the neighbour.’
Calling someone for advice brings to mind Bakardjieva’s (2005) ‘warm experts’, the term used to refer to the common practice of relying on trusted others who possess a greater degree of technological literacy to inform one’s practices and decisions. Whereas for many users, ‘warm experts’ play a role in increasing comfort levels, Mireille felt uneasy because of its ad hoc nature.
Confusion with the interface was a motivator for others to stop using their devices. Ghassan turns off his computer when he gets stuck and doesn’t know what to do with it: ‘That’s when I shut it off and I swear at it.’ Susan felt a lack of comfort and trust with the Macintosh computer at home, so she avoided using it, especially for certain purposes such as sending attachments.
Just as frequently as decreasing use, respondents described the somewhat more proactive strategy of replacing the problematic program or device due to a deficit in its functional or cognitive affordances. Such a move underlay Ian’s plan to switch to the more ‘elegant’ interface of a Mac, and Vusi’s plan to replace his current PDA with a more ‘user-friendly model’.
Small deficits in functional or physical affordances also led to various decisions to switch or upgrade, such as increased flexibility over moving pictures in a program, call display features, or screen resolution. Contextual convenience also played a factor, with Dylan choosing to switch to Mac because he used it at school and Edgar choosing to replace his Palm so that he and his wife could have matching models: ‘I became [embarrassed tone] technologically jealous. My wife cannot have a gadget that is more advanced than mine.’
Sometimes the reasons for replacement were motivated by genuine deficits that nagged at the user accompanied by a trade-off or loss. For instance, after PocketWord started ‘behaving erratically’, Peter downloaded FadPad to save his handwriting as electronic ink, but lost the ability to convert it into text. Replacement was also motivated by common maintenance affordance needs: slow speeds, saturated memory and worn-out batteries (some respondents decided to replace the entire phone, others opted to buy an extra battery so that they would not be stuck with a new contract associated with a new phone).
Overall, however, even though the reasons motivating replacement as opposed to decreased use were by and large the same, the overall effect was more positive, with respondents experiencing far less loss of control, both actual and perceived. Both of these general strategies are associated with a desire for control over the technology, but it is only stopping or decreasing use which brings about both an actual loss or trade-off and an experience of loss. Approximately half of all responses were tied to a desire for control, but whereas the experience of that loss was around 60 percent for users who chose to decrease or stop using the technology, it was only one-third as high for those who replaced the technology. Replacing or choosing an alternate device resulted in the user having to give up little.
Self-discipline, self-blame and acceptance
In approximately one-quarter of comments, respondents reportedly consented to difficult and unmanageable aspects of their device’s affordance and architectural profile in three ways: self-discipline, self-blame and acceptance. The motivation for adopting consent strategies was largely a matter of a cognitive deficit on the part of the technological dialogue and interaction.
When users encountered difficulties understanding or making use of the cognitive affordances of their devices, they sometimes claimed a need for greater self-discipline on their own part, particularly in the form of additional training or practice. Rather than blaming the text input system on his phone, David reassured himself that it gets easier with practice.
Andrew believes: Ultimately, you still have to make an effort … people need to know that they need to read or take a course, or commit to going somewhere and finding out what they need to know.
Here we could look to Foucault’s theories of self-discipline (1986) and technologies of the self (1988): users seek to cultivate within themselves, rigorously and voluntarily, the desired aptitudes and skills needed to perform their parts correctly within technological scripts.
More commonly when a user failed to understand the technology’s cognitive affordance, their strategy was to blame themselves for their lack of knowledge. Carol blames herself both for her inability to learn functions of her phone, and for being unable to make her computer do what she wants it to do: ‘I don’t think it’s it; it’s me.’ As Dylan states, ‘the biggest restriction is what you know how to do’.
Although cognitive difficulties were the most common reason for self-chastisement, deficits in functional and physical affordances were also dealt with in this way. Anne praises the technology and blames herself when her phone goes online accidentally, even though each time costs her money: This phone is so easy to use that if you’re not paying attention … you’ll hit the web … not because there’s really anything wrong with the phone. You’re just not paying attention.
Although many users claim a fear of technology crashing, they also blamed themselves for not backing up their files regularly. For Matt, ‘If data gets lost, it’s generally my fault.’ The lack of being able to understand and relate to the technology, no matter how faulty the design may have been, caused a great deal of self-directed chastisement on the part of users. Between 70 and 80 percent of responses were linked to a failure in the common language underlying technological dialogue.
A second line of reasoning is that limitations are inherent in technology. One such line was that it’s best not to tamper with technology. Reg for instance uses the standard toolbar because he is afraid to ‘mess with’ the settings. Users often draw on this explanation in line with a view of technological progressivism that forces them to accept the obsolescence of technology over time. The age of the device is used to explain lack of features, with each accepting that the problem cannot be changed and adding parenthetically that it would be fixed on a newer model. Thus the onus is on the user to catch up.
For other respondents, such as Pierre, sentiments about a technology’s limitations can be attributed to the fact that it’s ‘just a tool’. Matt is resigned to not understanding his computer’s error messages (often in numeric code): ‘It’s not human, so it can’t tell you where it hurts.’ Architectural control and the networked nature of technology is also sometimes greeted with resignation, being genuinely beyond the reach and control of users, for example Reg accepts the lack of ‘reveal code’ feature on Word which would enable a far more transparent view.
Previous failures can also have a dampening effect on a user’s desire to try a more proactive strategy. For instance, Michael resigned himself to the standardized toolbar on Word because his previous attempts to get the old toolbar back had failed.
Finally, users sometimes rationalized their acceptance by downplaying the importance of what they were doing. Poor signal, faulty sound reception and USB connection failures were rationalized by Nicole, Kyla and Andrew respectively due to the infrequent use they made of their phones. When Matt’s entire computer system shut down, he resigned himself to it because ‘it didn’t interrupt anything important, only an MSN conversation’.
Functional impairment – the degree to which the strategy responded to a significant impediment in the use of the technology – was a motivating factor both for self-discipline and acceptance. The collective nature of the technology was also a particular motivator for self-blame. Although we perceive technologies as molarities (Wise, 1997), in reality they are assembled from multiple, smaller units, including cables, various layers of programming code and so on. Technology’s nature of cobbling together multiple parts, each of which could cause problems or issues, was a motivator for self-blame; the even more intransigent system collective of digital technology motivated both self-blame and self-discipline.
Self-discipline as a strategy did not necessarily mean a trade-off; if the user followed through on their self-control and trained themselves to use the device, they would not be any worse off, having greater knowledge as their pay-out. By contrast, self-blame and acceptance both involved significant loss of command and trade-offs on the part of users, who, through resignation or self-deprecation, were often deprived of their enjoyment of the smooth, compatible functioning of the device. At 90 percent, nearly every strategy of self-blame or acceptance was involved with a loss in some way, compared with only 20 percent of self-disciplinary strategies.
Users who blamed themselves but lost out as a result, however, did not voice feelings of frustration, insecurity, fear or mistrust. Thus for this overall approach, the experience of loss of control on the part of the user was significantly reduced, although slightly higher for acceptance than self-blame, presumably because those who blamed themselves internalized a lack of merit – perhaps not seeing themselves as deserving of greater control. The desire for control was markedly absent in both strategies, but somewhat stronger for self-discipline.
Resistance or incorporation?
We began by looking at the tension between the scripts technologies embody, which delegate power in particular ways, and the struggle that exists as users ‘encounter technology as a dimension of their lifeworld’ (Feenberg, 1999). Feenberg argued that users, as subordinate actors, struggle ‘to appropriate the technologies with which they are involved and adapt them to the meanings that illuminate their lives’. For Feenberg, technologies never exhaustively define their capacities, capabilities or uses to which they can be put, and users continually create alternative applications and interpretations for these technologies in line with their own needs and values.
It appears that subscription and de-inscription of users in relation to their technologies take place in a number of ways. Users modify their interactions, both purposefully and habitually, thus responding only partially to embedded scripts. They also become loosened from control if they are not efficiently inscribed by the technology in the first place – if they are unable to understand it due to a cognitive mismatch, or make use of it due to its physical affordances. The technology, as a collective of delegated parts, also wends its way towards entropy as modification happens over time, such as wearing down, or due to an improper inscription which creates a faulty relationship with other parts, such as an erroneous piece of code or a faulty power cord.
Certain forms of adaptation appear to demonstrate cogent tailoring of architectural constraints and pathways to enable a more comfortable, useful fit by the user. The style or langue that technology offers can be put to several uses, or paroles, as Wise (1997) argues. Smith and Bakardjieva (2001) have illustrated in their own ethnographic work how users engage in ‘creative appropriation’ by inventing and making use of ‘little behaviour genres’ throughout the ‘generative process of technology,’ adapting their use in line with their own needs.
The current study revealed a variety of modifications to practice and technology which were geared toward tailoring the technological interaction to the user’s own needs, preferences and context. These strategies recognize the gap that often exists between the design process and its resultant functional, cognitive and physical affordances, and the actual fit with a user’s context and expectations of use. They also point to the ongoing ingenuity of users’ response to technology’s agency. Users are certainly not the ‘stupid user’ Ellen Rose (2003) reveals to be at the heart of most IT processes and services, but are instead resourceful and pragmatic in their dealings with technology’s deficits, which can give a sense of empowerment.
Other cases of adaptation, however, seem more of a process of consent. Two types of consent appear to operate in users’ interactions with technology. The first cluster of consent is the user’s internalization of control through their own incorporation of architectural constraints – consider the trial and error strategies of Dylan and Mireille. Wise argues that every time a user interacts with technology, it becomes more fully embodied through bodily and cognitive habit. For Wise, habits are contractions of technology and meaning, of action, substance and thought. In relating to technology, users continually modify their technical abilities and their affective dispositions.
The second cluster of consent is brought about by either the presence or absence of physical controls. In terms of presence, the convenience of following architectural constraints overshadows resistance a lot of the time, even if users would prefer a different type of interaction, or less overt control. Just as it is easier to respect walls rather than scale then, often it is simply easier to leave toolbars as Reg did, rather than figure out how to tailor them.
Conversely, the remoteness of physical controls in digital architectural control is also a provoker of consent. As emphasized, digital technologies are embedded in a vastly collective, networked form of control, not only due to the inherently collective aspects of all technological assemblages, but also due to the increasingly remote and wide-ranging aspects of digital systems and structures. Thus, the distance, obscurity and remoteness of control underpinning much of digital systems engenders consent; users often have few practical options in terms of how to respond to this remoteness. This includes not only the distance felt from the design, workings and maintenance features of much of technology, but also remoteness from the layers of expert knowledge underpinning code itself, and the obscurity of much of this code within the deep layerings of GUIs. As Lash suggests, ‘technological culture is culture at a distance’. Further, as Agre (2001) underlines, consent is often a consequence of long-term structural path dependency, where layers of organization, as well as ways of knowing and doing, are built up over time, each layer consolidating and reinforcing the last.
Thus, modification and adaptation of everyday practice is not in itself a type of resistance. It can as easily give in to the forces of command, eventuating in loss of control and trade-offs, both minor and major, on the part of the user, and by extension, on the culture of technology use and associated freedoms. When technological culture cannot be either discounted or removed, there is no possibility of retreat. As Lash has argued, we are compelled to be interpellated: ‘As technological nature, I must navigate through technological culture.’ We are compelled to delegate control to technologies, even as we lose control through that agency, and given what we know about how technologies are incorporated, we need to make the change from within. If habit is a contraction of technology and meaning, then we need to remain conscious of the meanings of control in order to make our incorporation positive, and resistant when necessary.
Thus, at the lowest level, since architectural control will always embody control, these controls can be understood in terms of their implications of power. As users expressed in this study, learning and knowing how to use and circumvent their technology’s problems, was a source of positive control and empowerment. Likewise, access to warm experts increased positive control over technology. Literate, embodied practice in this way becomes positive practice, and embodied knowledge becomes smart knowledge.
At a broader level, no amount of everyday practice will be sufficient without supporting circulating discourses, and thus participation is necessary in ongoing language wars to define the goals of technological devices, and meanings of contested terms such as ‘intellectual property’, ‘security’ and ‘user control’. Here, a more traditional form of politics is warranted, not in isolation from everyday practice, but to support it and to inform it at the level of meaning. Civil liberties lobbying groups, accessible options to digital control such as Creative Commons licences, and other discursive contributions are necessary. In essence, these approaches work to support each other. By changing the context of technological design, the layers of structural path dependency can be modified in line with ongoing concerns and needs of users and of technological culture. The level of everyday practice is useful and necessary, but alone will never be enough.
Footnotes
Funding
This research was funded by a grant from the Social Sciences and Research Council of Canada.
Notes
Author biographies
).