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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Alex Bowyer
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).
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/
