Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Theme issue on social interaction and mundane technologies

  • Editorial
  • Published:
Personal and Ubiquitous Computing Aims and scope Submit manuscript

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. Two workshops, one in 2007 and another in 2008, have motivated this special issue and each has resulted in a set of proceedings [72, 73].

  2. Here, we both consider and deviate from Silverstone et al.’s [74] elements in their notion of “moral economy of the household”.

  3. By invisible we mean, not the focus of the interaction, i.e. a conduit as opposed to something that needs to be worked out. This is distinct from Norman’s [56] and Weiser’s [75] use of the term.

References

  1. Tevis W (1963) The man who fell to earth. Del Rey Books, New York

    Google Scholar 

  2. Roeg N (1976) The man who fell to earth. British Lion Film Corporation, UK

  3. Goffman E (1967) Interaction ritual: essays in face-to-face behaviour. Anchor Books, Garden City

    Google Scholar 

  4. Nansen B, Arnold M, Gibbs MR, Davis H (2009) Domestic orchestration: rhythms in the mediated home. Time Soc 18(2/3):181–207

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Michaels M (2003) Between the mundane and the exotic: time for a different sociotechnical stuff. Time Soc 12(1):127–143

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Hillman D, Gibbs D (1998) Century makers: one hundred clever things we take for granted which have changed our lives over the last one hundred years. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London

    Google Scholar 

  7. Michaels M (2000) These boots are made for walking..: mundane technology, the body and human-environment relations. Body Soc 6(3–4):107–126

    Google Scholar 

  8. Tenner E (2003) Our own devices: the past and future of body technology. Alfred A. Knopf, New York

    Google Scholar 

  9. Yates J (1989) Control through communication: the rise of system in American management. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore

    Google Scholar 

  10. Plummer K (2001) Documents of life 2: an invitation to a critical humanism. Sage Publications, London

  11. Crabtree A, French A, Greenhalgh C, Benford S, Cheverst K, Fitton D, Rouncefield M, Graham C (2006) Developing digital records: early experiences of record and replay. Comput Support Coop Work 15(4):281–319

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Cheverst K, Dix A, Fitton D, Rouncefield M, Graham C (2007) Exploring awareness related messaging through two situated-display-based systems. Hum Comput Interact 22(1):173–220

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Hutchinson H, Mackay W, Westerlund B, Bederson BB, Druin A, Plaisant C, Beaudouin-Lafon M, Conversy S, Evans H, Hansen H, Roussel N, Eiderbäck B (2003) Technology probes: inspiring design for and with families. In: Proceedings of the 2005 SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems (CHI ’03). ACM, New York, pp 17–24

  14. Urry J (2004) Connections. Environ Plan D Soc Space 22:27–37

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Larsen J, Urry J, Axhausen K (2006) Mobilities, networks, geographies. Ashgate Publishing Limited, Aldershot

    Google Scholar 

  16. Smith D (2009) Mobiles give Africa’s farmers the chance to set out their stall. Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/katine/2009/jan/04/katine-uganda-africa-mobile-phones. Accessed October 2009

  17. Sacks H (1992) A single instance of a phone-call opening. In: Jefferson G (ed) Lectures on conversation, vol II. Blackwell, Oxford, pp 542–553

  18. Khalid H, Dix A (2010) The experience of photologging: global mechanisms and local interactions. Pers Ubiquit Comput. doi:10.1007/s00779-009-0261-4

  19. Bury S, Ishmael J, Race NJP, Smith P (2010) Designing for social interaction with mundane technologies: issues of security and trust. Pers Ubiquit Comput. doi:10.1007/s00779-009-0257-0

  20. Kristoffersen S, Bratteberg I (2010) Design ideas for IT in public spaces. Pers Ubiquit Comput. doi:10.1007/s00779-009-0255-2

  21. O'Connor C, Fitzpatrick G (2010) Making video mundane–intellectual disability and the use of camcorders. Pers Ubiquit Comput. doi:10.1007/s00779-009-0258-z

  22. Gaver W (2001) Designing for ludic aspects of everyday life. ERCIM News, No. 47. Available at http://www.ercim.org/publication/Ercim_News/enw47/gaver.html. Accessed October 2009

  23. Strauss A, Fagerhaugh S, Suczek B, Weiner C (1985) Social organisation of medical work. University of Chicago Press, Chicago

    Google Scholar 

  24. Kanis M, Brinkman P (2010) Making mundane pleasures visible: mediating daily likings with lightweight technology. Pers Ubiquit Comput. doi:10.1007/s00779-009-0256-1

  25. Satchell C, Graham C (2010) Conveying identity with mobile content. Pers Ubiquit Comput. doi:10.1007/s00779-009-0254-3

  26. Oulasvirta A, Lehtonen E, Kurvinen E, Raento M (2010) Making the ordinary visible in microblogs. Pers Ubiquit Comput. doi:10.1007/s00779-009-0259-y

  27. Luff P, Pitsch K, Heath C, Herdman P, Wood J (2010) Swiping paper and the second hand: mundane artifacts, gesture and collaboration. Pers Ubiquit Comput. doi:10.1007/s00779-009-0253-4

  28. Tolmie P, Crabtree A, Egglestone S, Humble J, Greenhalgh C, Rodden T (2010) Digital plumbing: the mundane work of deploying UbiComp in the home. Pers Ubiquit Comput. doi:10.1007/s00779-009-0260-5

  29. Silverstone R, Hirsch E, Morley D (1992) Information and communication technologies and the moral economy of the household. In: Silverstone R, Hirsch E (eds) Consuming technologies: media and information in domestic spaces. Routledge, London, pp 15–31

  30. Tolmie P, Crabtree A, Greenhalgh C, Rodden, T, Benford S (2007) “Making the home network at home”. In: Proceedings of the European conference on computer supported cooperative work (ECSCW ’07). Springer, Berlin, pp 331–350

  31. Hinchliffe S (2000) Entanglements: geographies of domination/resistance. In: Philo C, Routledge P, Sharpe J, Paddison R (eds) Power and resistance: geographies of entanglement. Routledge, London

    Google Scholar 

  32. Laurier E (2002) The region as a socio-technical accomplishment of mobile workers. In: Brown B, Green N, Harper R (eds) Wireless world. Springer, London, pp 46–61

  33. Crabtree A, Hemmings T, Rodden T, Cheverst K, Clarke K, Dewsbury G, Hughes J, Rouncefield M (2003) Designing with care: adapting cultural probes to inform design in sensitive settings. In: Proceedings of the 2003 Australasian conference on computer-human interaction (OZCHI’03). Ergonomics Society of Australia, Brisbane, pp 4–13

  34. Garfinkel H, Weider L (1992) Two incommensurable, asymmetrically alternate technologies of social analysis. In: Watson G, Seiller RM (eds) Text in context: contributions to ethnomethodology. Sage Publications, London, pp 175–206

    Google Scholar 

  35. Urry J (2000) Sociology beyond societies: mobilities for the twenty-first century. Routledge, London

  36. Alberts C, Behrens S, Pethia R, Wilson W (1999) Operationally critical threat, asset, and vulnerability evaluation framework, version 1.0. Technical Report CMU/SEI-99-TR-017, Carnegie Mellon University

  37. Dourish P, Anderson K (2006) Collective information practice: exploring privacy and security as social and cultural phenomena. Hum Comput Interact 21:319–342

    Article  Google Scholar 

  38. Urry J (2003) Social networks, travel and talk. Br J Sociol 54(2):155–175

    Article  Google Scholar 

  39. Reeves S, Benford S, O’Malley C, Fraser M (2005) Designing the spectator experience. In: Proceedings of the 2005 SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems (CHI ’05). ACM Press, Portland, pp 741–750

  40. Strauss A (1993) Continual permutations of action. Aldine de Gruyter, New York

    Google Scholar 

  41. Kling R (1996) Hope and horrors: technological utopianism and anti-utopianism in narratives of computerization. In: Kling R (ed) Computerization and controversy. Academic Press, San Diego, pp 40–58

  42. Bijker WE (2003) The need for critical intellectuals: a space for STS. Sci Technol Hum Values 28(4):443–450

    Article  Google Scholar 

  43. Kopytoff I (1986) The cultural biography of things: commoditization as process. In: Appadurai A (ed) The social life of things. Cambridge University Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  44. Bradner E (2001) Social affordances of computer-mediated communication technology: understanding adoption. In: Extended abstracts of the 2001 SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems (CHI ’01). ACM, New York, pp 67–68

  45. Wellman B, Quan-Haase A, Boase J, Chen W, Hampton K, Diaz de Isla I, Miyata K (2003) The social affordances of the internet for networked individualism. J Comput Mediated Commun 8:3

    Google Scholar 

  46. Gibson JJ (1977) The theory of affordances. In: Shaw R, Bransford J (eds) Perceiving, acting and knowing. Erlbaum, Hillsdale

    Google Scholar 

  47. Norman DA (1988) The psychology of everyday things. Basic Books, New York

    Google Scholar 

  48. Anderson R, Sharrock W (1993) Can organisations afford knowledge? Comput Supported Coop Work 1:143–161

    Article  Google Scholar 

  49. Shove E, Watson M, Hand M, Ingram J (2007) The design of everyday life. Berg, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  50. Latour B (2000) When things strike back: a possible contribution of “science studies” to the social sciences. Br J Sociol 51(1):107–123

    Article  Google Scholar 

  51. Latour (1992) Where are the missing masses? A sociology of a few mundane artifacts. In: Bijker WE, Law J (eds) Shaping technology: building society studies in sociotechnical change. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp 225–264

  52. Shoggen P (1989) Behaviour settings: a revision and extension of Roger G. Barker’s Ecological Psychology. Stanford University Press, Stanford

    Google Scholar 

  53. Sartre J-P (1992) Being and nothingness: a phenomenological essay on ontology/translated and with an introduction by Hazel E Barnes. Washington Square Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  54. Smith W, Lewi H (2007) Magical Beginnings of the Mundane. In: Graham C, Rouncefield M (eds) Proceedings of the international workshop on social interaction and mundane technologies. Lancaster University, pp 1–4

  55. Latour B (1999) Pandora’s hope. Harvard University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  56. Norman D (1998) The invisible computer: why good products can fail the personal computer is so complex and information appliances are the solution. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA

    Google Scholar 

  57. Grudin J (1990) The computer reaches out: the historical continuity of interface design. In: Proceedings of the 1990 SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems (CHI ’90). ACM, New York, pp 261–268

  58. Bowers J, Rodden T (1993) Exploding the interface: experiences of a CSCW network. In: Proceedings of INTERACT ’93 and the 1993 SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems (CHI ’93). ACM, pp 255–262

  59. Bell C, Newby H (1976) Communion, communalism, class and community action: the sources of new urban politics. In: Herbert D, Johnston R (eds) Social areas in cities, vol 2. Wiley, Chichester

  60. Hetherington K (1994) The contemporary significance of Schmalenbach’s concept of the bund. Sociol Rev 42(1):1–25

    Google Scholar 

  61. Mynatt ED, Adler A, Ito M, O’Day VL (1997) Design for network communities. In: Pemberton S (ed) Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems, CHI ’97, Atlanta, 22–27 March 1997. ACM, New York, pp 210–217

  62. Garfinkel H (1967) Studies in ethnomethodology. Polity, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  63. Plummer K (1983) Documents of life: an introduction to the problems and literature of a humanistic method. Allen & Unwin, London

    Google Scholar 

  64. Grinter RE, Eldridge M (2001) Y do tngrs luv 2 txt msg? In: Proceedings of the 2001 European conference on computer supported cooperative work (ECSCW’01), Kluwer, Dordrecht, pp 219–38

  65. Rakow L, Navarro V (1993) Remote mothering and the parallel shift: women meet the cellular telephone. Crit Stud 10(2):144–157

    Google Scholar 

  66. Kelly S, Iszatt White M, Martin D, Rouncefield M (2006) Leadership refrains: patterns of leadership. Leadership 2(2):181–201

    Google Scholar 

  67. Vetere F, Gibbs M, Kjeldskov J, Howard S, Mueller F, Pedell S, Mecoles K, Bunyan M (2005) Mediating intimacy: designing technologies to support strong-tie relationships. In: Proceedings of the 2005 SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems (CHI ’05). ACM Press, New York, pp 471–480

  68. Chomsky N (2003) Hegemony or survival. Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest

  69. Crabtree A, Rodden T, Tolmie P, Button G (2009) Ethnography considered harmful. In: Proceedings of the 27th international conference on human factors in computing systems, CHI ’09, Boston, 4–9 April 2009. ACM, New York, pp 879–888

  70. Oudshoorn N, Pinch T (2003) How users and non-users matter. In: How users matter. The co-construction of technologies and users. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp 4–22

  71. Satchell C, Dourish P (2009) Beyond the user: use and non-use in HCI. In: Proceedings of the 2009 Australiasian conference on computer-human interaction (OZCHI ’09). ACM, New York

  72. Graham C, Rouncefield M (2008) Proceedings of the 2008 workshop on social interaction and mundane technologies (SIMTech ’08), Lancaster University. ISBN 978-1-86220-218-4

  73. Graham C, Rouncefield M (2007) Proceedings of the 2007 workshop on social interaction and mundane technologies (SIMTech ’07), Lancaster University. ISBN 978-1-86220-208-5

  74. Silverstone R, Hirsch E, Morley D (1992) Information and communication technologies and the moral economy of the household. In: Silverstone R, Hersch E (eds) Consuming technologies: media and communication in domestic spaces. Routledge, London

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  75. Weiser M (1991) The computer for the 21st century. Sci Am 265(3):94–104

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

The work on this editorial was supported by the Microsoft European Research Fellowship "Social Interaction and Mundane Technologies". Thanks to all the theme issue reviewers for their time and input and to all the authors for their patience and diligence. A special thanks to Martin Gibbs for his thoughtful critique of an earlier version of this editorial.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences, University of California, Irvine, CA, 92697-3440, USA

    Paul Dourish

  2. Department of Information Systems, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, 3010, Australia

    Connor Graham

  3. Department of Sociology, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, M15 6LL, UK

    Dave Randall

  4. Computing Department, Lancaster University, Lancaster, LA1 4YW, UK

    Mark Rouncefield

Authors
  1. Paul Dourish
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Connor Graham
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Dave Randall
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Mark Rouncefield
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Connor Graham.

Additional information

C. Graham is an independent researcher.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Dourish, P., Graham, C., Randall, D. et al. Theme issue on social interaction and mundane technologies. Pers Ubiquit Comput 14, 171–180 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-010-0281-0

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-010-0281-0

Keywords

Search

Navigation