The Non-Use of Technology: What Does It Mean?
Nicolas Nova once again seeks out the really useful and important work on technology. This time he’s found some research that attempts to go beyond the discursive construction of a ‘non-user’ of technology as simply someone who hasn’t begun using it yet. The researchers identify six forms of ‘non-use’ of technology, of which who can say never to have experienced at least one?:
- Lagging adoption
- Active resistance
- Disenchantment
- Disenfranchisement
- Displacement
- Disinterest
.
I recommend reading Nicolas’ post and the research paper [pdf] that informed it, which concludes:
…what we have tried to show here is that non-use is not an absence or a gap; it is not negative space. Non-use is, often, active, meaningful, motivated, considered, structured, specific, nuanced, directed, and productive.
I haven’t read the whole paper yet but we might add that beyond the technophiles and techno-utopians – who often dismiss non-users as utterly uncool luddites committing the equivalent of cultural seppuku – advertisers and marketers do not view non-use as negative space. Rather, they view it as as-yet-unconquered space.
When you consider the equivalent technological drive towards ubiquity, you have to wonder – as Paul Virilio has consistently done – whether the technological paradigm inherently marginalises non-users, and what effect this has on society. Even more than that, if technology has its own velocity, can it or should it be somehow constrained? Although I’ve always maintained a more social constructivist approach than a technological determinist one, I don’t think this particular question is excluded by either theoretical standpoint. In a world of rampant technological innovation and intervention, not to mention dependence, is it more politically courageous to state one’s non-use as a mark of autonomy in itself?
