Being-with Information Technology : Critical explorations beyond use and design

Abstract: In the thesis a theoretical exploration concerning the significance of information technology in everyday life is conducted. The main question advanced is how the reflexive nature of information technology can be envisioned. By this question attention is directed to transformative, experiential and dynamic qualities of information technology,i.e. unknown mergers of information technology and human experience. It is tentatively suggested that it is within everyday life that such transformative abilities are due to be significant. That is, depending on if and how people experience otherness in their relationships with information technology different strategies and responses of being a part of the whole are achieved.The main purpose of the thesis is to establish a theoretical base that both reveals such reflexivity and allows for further studies of the significance of information technology in everyday life. An extended purpose is to provide the critical tradition of Informatics research with an alternative view on what might count as critical ideals as well as make some suggestions about what should be subject to further research within this tradition.The framework#being-with information technology#emerges as a result of my insistence on grasping the relationship between information technology and human experience as a whole. Informed primarily by Martin Heidegger’s %1977& thinking on technology the framework ascribes primacy to meaning-making and sense-making processes. The framework also aspire to reach beyond notions of use and design by emphasizing the role and importance of the potential of information technology to transform human experience in new and significant ways. This potential is referred to as information technology as lifeworlds. Throughout the thesis, information technology as lifeworlds is recognized in a number of ways. At the same time it is argued that this is a never-ending, dynamic, open,complex, and often contradictory object of study.It is suggested that a focus on aesthetic experiences entails the possibility to investigate ambiguous meanings of information technology, meanings that all are intrinsic to information technology, but so far has received little or no attention. This suggestion is also a move away from a view of information technology as an object, with certain features, qualities and properties, towards a view of information technology as a relation to the world, to itself,and towards being human.