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Empowering Users in a Fragmented World of Opinionated Technology

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Alex Bowyer

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Abstract

The smartphone revolution promised us that whatever you want to do, “there’s an app for that”[39]. We do carry a vastly powerful portfolio of possibilities in our pockets, but usage is complex. The way we can perform tasks is constrained and limited. Our data is locked into different formats and apps. We can only use technology in the ways that we are allowed. Computers should be general purpose tools you can use to achieve your goals, but in reality computer use means participating in constrained, walled-garden user experiences.The most critical Digital Civics issue as we go forward in the post-Web 2.0, Internet-everywhere era is this: how do we create technology that truly empowers people in their daily lives, when today’s digital reality is a complex, fractured web of software and services shaped by companies motivated to disempower us?I will make the case that empowerment is a central issue for HCI practitioners and designers (as it always has been) (Section 1), that current trends are removing user freedom (Section 2), and frame empowerment as a grand challenge for the emerging fourth wave of HCI (Section 3).


Publication metadata

Author(s): Bowyer AJB

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: HCI for Digital Civics 2016

Year: 2016

Volume: 2021

Issue: 2021

Pages: Blog Article

Print publication date: 13/12/2016

Online publication date: 13/12/1982

Acceptance date: 13/12/2016

Date deposited: 15/03/2021

Publisher: Open Lab, Newcastle University

URL: https://old.openlab.ncl.ac.uk/hci-digitalcivics-2016/2016/12/13/empowering-users-in-a-fragmented-world-of-opinionated-technology/


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