Good, Evil and Technology: A Fun Philosophical Inquiry

Are there good websites and evil websites? Rarely. Most things we know and use fall in between: tools are amoral. They don’t prevent someone from using them for bad or work better when used for good. Great software performs just as well when you’re drafting praise for homeless shelter volunteers as when you’re writing recipes for orphan stew. If we want to claim that the things we make are good or bad, we have to go beyond their function. Goodness, in the moral sense, means something very different from good in the engineering sense.

Berkun, Scott. ScottBerkun.com (2001). Articles>Technology>Theory

Hiding in Plain Sight: An Interview with Adam Greenfield

Is everyware overwriting what we know as everyday? On the heels of finishing his first book, Adam Greenfield talks with Boxes and Arrows about Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing and how the concepts are reshaping our lives.

Danzico, Liz. Boxes and Arrows (2006). Articles>Technology>Cultural Theory

Re-Negotiating with Technology: Training Towards More Sustainable Technical Communication    

Technical communicators have often defined their relationship with technology using a metaphor of 'technology as tool,' an outlook that reinforces perceptions of practitioners as 'tool jockeys,' threatens the sustainability of the field, and isolates academics and practitioners alike from design and business decision-making and from better intellectual connections with other fields. We suggest that one potential solution is a new approach to training; if technical communicators can conduct technology training in ways that shift this metaphorical focus, they can not only better connect academics with practitioners but also create new connections with other fields, outlooks, and theories, becoming the sort of profession that survives global economic shifts and succeeds in both academic departments and industry.

Clark, Dave and Rebekka Andersen. Technical Communication Online (2005). Articles>Technology>Theory>Tropes

Theoretical Approaches to Designing Experiences with Technology  

This paper examines various theoretical approaches on designing the user experience with technology and argues that a humanistic, conceptual framework augment current design industry practice. Taking into account psychological approaches and traditional narrative theory, this paper presents a theory for the human experience and applies this theory to "experience design," or the design of the human experience with technology. Guiding principles for the experience designer based on the paper's theoretical underpinnings are proposed.

Fukumoto, Dane K.T. STC Proceedings (2005). Articles>Technology>User Experience>Theory

Review: What's the Matter with the Internet?  

You should not read this book if you're looking for the final answer to what's the matter with the Internet. Poster points us toward the issues that he thinks will affect the Internet's ultimate shape—politics, authorship, ethnicity, citizenship, identity—but he leaves us with more questions than answers. By questioning and observing, and by applying key technological theories, he suggests a way of approaching a critique of the Internet.

Kitalong, Karla Saari. Technical Communication Online (2003). Articles>Reviews>Technology>Theory

Does Technology Enable or Determine Communication?

Communication technologies, especially those that are participatory, clearly do both, determine and enable communication. They determine communication by function of display possibilities, editing capabilities, information-chunk size allowances, access affordances, cost implications, communicative capabilities (one-to-one, one-to-many, etc.). Clearly, however, these communication technologies enable communication that otherwise would not be possible.

Brown, Konstanze Alex. Konjektures (2009). Articles>Technology>Communication>Theory