Abstract
How should we understand postphenomenological methodology? Postphenomenology is a research perspective which builds on phenomenological and pragmatist philosophy to explore human–technology relations, but one with open methodological questions. Here, I offer some thoughts on the epistemological processes that should be (and often implicitly may be) at work in this research. In particular, I am concerned with postphenomenological research on technological “multistability,” i.e., a device’s ever-present capacity to be used for a variety of purposes, and to always be meaningful in multiple ways. I develop a methodology called “variational cross-examination,” which entails the critical contrast of a device’s various stabilities. As a set of instructive examples, I draw on my own line of research on the politics of public spaces, and especially the critique of anti-homeless design.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Photo by Author
Photo by Author
Photo by Author
Similar content being viewed by others
Explore related subjects
Discover the latest articles, news and stories from top researchers in related subjects.Notes
My self-citation in the References section of this article is already more than self-indulgent. For references to the cases referred to in this paragraph, see: https://rosenberger.spp.gatech.edu/publications/.
Elsewhere I have articulated this point in terms of a distinction between a “positive” and “negative” usage of multistability (e.g., Rosenberger 2010, 2017b). The idea is that the notion of multistability is used “negatively” when wielded as part of an effort to show that some other theory does not recognize the fundamental pragmatic relationality of technology, and thus that that other theory is somehow essentializing, or foundational, or over-generalizing. The notion of multistability is taken up in a “positive” manner when it is used as part of an investigation into the world, spelling out and exploring something’s multiplicity and the implications of that multiplicity. Whyte develops a related set of distinctions in (2015).
These issues become complicated quite quickly when we address complex technologies with enclosed interiors, such as digital devices. Scholars in the philosophy of technology such as Heather Wiltse, Alberto Romele, Yoni Van Den Eede, and others are bringing together a variety of perspectives (including but not limited to postphenomenology) to address these challenges (e.g., Wiltse 2014; Van Den Eede 2017; Romele 2020; Romele et al. 2020; Wiltse 2020).
Several examples designs and art projects that critique anti-homeless design can be found in (Rosenberger 2017a: chap. 5).
For a more fully-developed version of the argument of this subsection, see Rosenberger 2017b.
I first identified the distinction between an “axis of usage” and an “axis of difference” within work in the philosophy of technology on the topic of discrimination in Rosenberger (2020a). For more on what I’ve been calling an “axis of difference” pattern of discrimination that happens through technology, I’d like to direct you to the work of Dylan Wittkower. It is my opinion that his writings on the phenomenology of discrimination and technology should find their way into everyone’s philosophy of technology syllabi (Wittkower 2016, 2017).
References
Aagaard J (2017) Introducing postphenomenological research: a brief and selective sketch of phenomenological research methods. Int J Qual Stud Ed 30(6):519–533. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2016.1263884
Aagaard J (2018) Magnetic and multistable: reinterpreting the affordances of educational technology. Int J Ed Tech Higher Ed. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-017-0088-4
Aagaard J, Friis JKBO, Sorenson J, Tafdrup O, Hasse C (eds) (2018) Postphenomenological methodologies: new ways in mediating techno-human relationships. Lexington Books, Lanham
Akrich M (1992) The description of technical artifacts. In: Bijker WE, Law J (eds) Shaping technology/building society. MIT Press, Cambridge, pp 205–224
Aydin C, Woge MG, Verbeek PP (2019) Technological environmentality: conceptualizing technology as a mediating milieu. Philos Technol 32:321–338. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-018-0309-3
Blond L (2019) Studying robots outside the lab: HRI as ethnography. Paladyn J Behav Robot 10(1):117–127. https://doi.org/10.1515/pjbr-2019-0007
Botin L (2019) Sustainable futures: ethico-politico dimensions of technology. In: Lally R (ed) Sustainability in the anthropocene age: philosophical essays on renewable technologies. Lexington Books, Lanham, pp 153–170
Chellew C (2019) Defending suburbia: exploring the use of defensive urban design outside of the city center. Canadian J of Urb Res 28(1):19–33
Code L (1991) What can she know? Feminist theory and the construction of knowledge. Cornell University Press, Ithaca
Collins PH (2000) Black feminist thought: knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment, 2nd edn. Routledge, New York
de Boer M, Slatman J (2018) The mediated breast: technology, agency, and breast cancer. Hum Stud 41:275–292. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-017-9445-5
de Boer B, Hoek J, Kudina O (2018) Can the technological mediation approach improve technology assessment? A critical view from ‘within’. J Resp Innov 5(3):299–315. https://doi.org/10.1080/23299460.2018.1495029
Dorrestijn S (2017) The care of our hybrid selves: ethics in times of technical mediation. Found Sci 22:311–321. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10699-015-9440-0
Feenberg A (1999) Questioning technology. Routledge, New York
Friis JKBO (2017) Gestalt descriptions, embodiments, and medical image interpretation. AI Soc 32:209–218. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-015-0615-6
Groover H (2017) Seattle uses bike racks to discourage homeless camping. The Stranger. Dec. 19th, 2017 https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2017/12/19/25638433/seattle-uses-bike-racks-to-discourage-homeless-camping. Accessed 20 Aug 2020
Haraway D (1988) Situated knowledges: the science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. Fem Stud 14(3):575–599
Harding S (1986) The science question in feminism. Cornell University Press, Ithaca
Harding S (2015) Objectivity and diversity: another logic of scientific research. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago
Hasse C (2013) Artifacts that talk: mediating technologies as multistable signs and tools. Subjectivity 6(1):79–100. https://doi.org/10.1057/sub.2012.29
Hasse C (2015) An anthropology of learning: on nested frictions in cultural ecologies. Springer, London
Hasse C (2020) Posthumanist learning: what robots and cyborgs teach us about being ultra-social. Routledge, London
Hauser S, Oogjes D, Wakkary R, Verbeek PP (2018) An annotated portfolio on doing postphenomenology through research products. In: DIS’18, June 9–13, 2018, Hong Kong. ACM, pp. 459–471. https://doi.org/10.1145/3196709.3196745
Ihde D (1993) Postphenomenology: essays in the postmodern context. Northwestern University Press, Evanston
Ihde D (2009) Postphenomenology and technoscience: the Peking University lectures. SUNY Press, Albany
Ihde D (2016a) Husserl’s missing technologies. Fordham University Press, New York
Ihde D (2016b) Reply to my interlocutors. Techné 20(2):168–176. https://doi.org/10.5840/techne201672855
Irwin S (2017) Multimedia stabilities: exploring the GoPro experience. In: Van Den Eede Y, Irwin S, Wellner G (eds) Postphenomenology and media. Lexington Books, Lanham, pp 103–121
Jensen OB (2017) Dark design: mobility injustice materialized. In: Cook N, Butz D (eds) Mobilities, mobility justice and social justice. Routledge, London, pp 116–128
Jensen MM, Aagaard J (2018) A postphenomenological method for HCI research. In: Proceedings of the 30th Australian Computer-Human Interaction Conference, Melbourne, VIC, Australia, December 4–7, 2018 (OzCHI ‘18), pp. 242-251. https://doi.org/10.1145/3292147.3292170
Latour B (1992) Where are the missing masses? The sociology of a few mundane artifacts. In: Bijker WE, Law J (eds) Shaping technology/building society. MIT Press, Cambridge, pp 225–258
Latour B (1999) Pandora’s hope. Harvard University Press, Cambridge
Lewis RS (2017) Turning our back on art: a postphenomenological study of museum selfies. Kunstlicht 38:2–99
Lorini G, Moroni S (2020) Ruling without rules: not only nudges. Regulation beyond normativity. Glob Jur. https://doi.org/10.1515/gj-2019-0051
Moerenhout T, Fischer GS, Devisch I (2020) The elephant in the room: a postphenomenological view on the electronic heath record and its impact on the clinical encounter. Med Healthc Philos 23:227–236. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11019-019-09923-5
Petty J (2016) The London spikes controversy: homelessness, urban securitisation and the question of ‘hostile architecture’. Int J Crime Justice Soc Dem 5(1):67–81. https://doi.org/10.5204/ijcjsd.v5i1.286
Romele A (2020) Digital hermeneutics: philosophical investigations in new media technologies. Routledge, Abingdon
Romele A, Severo M, Furia P (2020) Digital hermeneutics: from interpreting with machines to interpretational machines. AI Soc 35:73–86. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-018-0856-2
Rosenberger R (2008) Perceiving other planets: bodily experience, interpretation, and the Mars Orbiter Camera. Hum Stud 31:63–75. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-007-9078-1
Rosenberger R (2009) The sudden experience of the computer. AI Soc 24:173–180. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-009-0190-9
Rosenberger R (2010) Deflating the overblown accounts of technology: a review of Ihde’s Ironic Technics. AI Soc 25:133–136. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-009-0222-5
Rosenberger R (2013) The importance of generalized bodily habits for a future world of ubiquitous computing. AI Soc 28:289–296. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-012-0410-6
Rosenberger R (2014) Multistability and the agency of mundane artifacts: from speed bumps to subway benches. Hum Stud 37:369–392. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-014-9317-1
Rosenberger R (2017a) Callous objects: designs against the homeless. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis
Rosenberger R (2017b) Notes on a nonfoundational phenomenology of technology. Found Sci 22:471–494. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10699-015-9480-5
Rosenberger R (2017c) On the hermeneutics of everyday things: or, the philosophy of fire hydrants. AI Soc 32:233–241. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-016-0674-3
Rosenberger R (2020a) ‘But that’s not phenomenology!:’ A phenomenology of discriminatory technologies. Techné 24(1/2):83–113. https://doi.org/10.5840/techne2020210117
Rosenberger R (2020b) On hostile design: theoretical and empirical prospects. Urb Stud 57(4):883–893. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098019853778
Rosenberger R, Verbeek PP (eds) (2015) Postphenomenological investigations. Lexington Books, Lanham
Savicic G, Savic S (eds) (2013) Unpleasant design. G.L.O.R.I.A, Belgrade
Schindler S (2015) Architectural exclusion: discrimination and segregation through physical design of the built environment. Yale Law J 124:1937–2024
Shew A (2017) The long way around: it shouldn’t be this hard on campus. Chron High Ed 9/17/2017. https://www.chronicle.com/article/It-Shouldn-t-Be-This-Hard-to/241166. Accessed 20 Aug 2020
Shew A (2020) AI and ableism. IEEE Tech Soc Mag 39(1):40–50. https://doi.org/10.1109/mts.2020.2967492(85)
Smith N, Walters P (2018) Desire lines and defensive architecture in modern urban environments. Urb Stud 55(13):2980–2995. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098017732690
Tripathi AK (2017) Hermeneutics of technological culture. AI Soc 32:137–148. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-017-0717-4
Van Den Eede Y (2015) Tracing the tracker: a postphenomenological inquiry into self-tracking technologies. In: Rosenberger R, Verbeek PP (eds) Postphenomenological investigations. Lexington Books, Lanham, pp 143–158
Van Den Eede Y (2017) The mediumness of the world: a love triangle of postphenomenology, media ecology, and object-oriented philosophy. In: Van Den Eede Y, Irwin SO, Wellner G (eds) Postphenomenology and media. Lexington Books, Lanham, pp 229–250
Verbeek PP (2011) Moralizing technology: understanding and designing the morality of things. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago
Warfield K (2017) MirrorCameraRoom: the gendered multi-(in)stabilities of the selfie. Fem Med Stud 17(1):77–92. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2017.1261843
Wellner G (2016) A postphenomenological inquiry of cell phones. Lexington Books, Lanham
Whyte KP (2015) What Is multistability? A theory of the keystone concept of postphenomenological research. In: Friis JKBO, Crease RP (eds) Technoscience and postphenomenology: the Manhattan papers. Lexington Books, New York, pp 69–81
Wiltse H (2014) Unpacking digital material mediation. Techné 18(3):154–182. https://doi.org/10.5840/techne201411322
Wiltse H (2020) Revealing relations of fluid assemblages. In: Wiltse H (ed) Relating to Things. Bloomsbury, London
Wittkower DE (2016) Principles of anti-discriminatory design. In 2016 IEEE International Symposium on Ethics in Engineering, Science, and Technology. IEEE, Piscataway https://doi.org/10.1109/ETHICS.2016.7560055
Wittkower DE (2017) Discrimination. In: Pitt J, Shew A (eds) Spaces for the future: a companion to the philosophy of technology. Routledge, New York, pp 14–28
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Rosenberger, R. On variational cross-examination: a method for postphenomenological multistability. AI & Soc 38, 2229–2242 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-020-01050-7
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-020-01050-7