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2016 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

From Care for Design to Becoming Matters: New Perspectives for the Development of Socio-technical Systems

Authors : Federico Cabitza, Angela Locoro

Published in: Digitally Supported Innovation

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

In this paper, we start by deconstructing the widely-mentioned concept of care in the IS literature, to unveil its inherent shortcomings and ambiguities, and find opportunities to go beyond it while preserving its value for the development of better socio-technical systems. We find an important strand in the feminist studies tradition, and in particular in the contributions related to the so called “new materialism”. Notwithstanding their differences, these contrarian and often neglected voices point to the importance of relational thinking and material engagement with our technological objects. For this reason, in continuing the path indicated by Ciborra with his idea of care, we advocate a new shift from this step to the next one, where becoming matters more than being, and the caring about matter is more important than design abstractions.

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previous chapter Context and Action: A Unitary Vision Within a Logic-Based Multi-agent Environment

next chapter Redefining the Mutual Positions of the Social and Technical Sides of Socio-Technical Systems

If Ciborra had spoken of “caring” (usually a loving feeling) rather than of “care”, or of “taking care”, the positive perspective would have likely been clearer but the overall meaning also less rich, in a way.

“Interessamento solerte e premuroso per un oggetto, che impegna sia il nostro animo sia la nostra attività” Vocabolario On line Treccani—http://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/cura/.

Harper [28].

In so doing, he explicitly drew the term from the semantic well of the Proto-Germanic *surgo “to watch over, worry; be ill, suffer”.

Among these authors, it is easy to recall Dostoyevsky (Notes from Underground), Allen (Love and Death), Proust (In Search of Lost Time), but also women writers like Silvina Ocampo and Marguerite-Marie Alacoque.

Heidegger defined sorge as the Being of Dasein, that is the fundamental structure that underlies each and every particular human existence.

These interactions are sometimes more frequent and durable than the daily interaction with humans, Knorr-Cetina claims. This phenomenon of continuous companionship has assimilated such objects to be part of the so called “lifeworld” [19], a term which can be roughly compared to the Heideggerian “Being-in-the-World”, and is defined as “a significant configuration […] the immediate fundament upon which almost all human experience depends […] a dynamic horizon in which we live, and which “lives with us” in the sense that nothing can appear in our lifeworld except as lived.” (our emphasis).

One should also remember the high esteem attached by Nietzsche to the Greek world, and in particular for their attention to surface: “oh, those Greeks! They knew how to live. What is required for that is to stop courageously at the surface, the fold, the skin, to adore appearance, to believe in forms, tones, words, in the whole Olympus of appearance. Those Greeks were superficial—out of profondity” (The Gay Science).

Although related to a more existentialist and autobiographic trait of the thought of Nietzsche, this idea is evocatively epitomized by the exhortation “Become, who you are” (“Werde, der du bist”), which he took from Pindar (Genoi hoios essi, Pythians, 2, 72) and that can be found, e.g., in ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’ and ‘Ecce Homo’.

This decoupling can be said to have sealed 25 centuries of gestation of the epistemology of Plato into the philosophy of the scientific management of Taylor.

The interface as situated place where humans and non-humans are mutually constituted [49]. The reader could notice that interface derives from “inter” (between) and “facies” (appearance, form, figure), in its turn from “facere”, to make in Latin. Thus the interface can be seen as the place where two entities make themselves for the other, and each shapes the other in turn.

Indeed, as Latour points out, “order is extracted not from disorder but from orders” [38] (p. 161).

It is also argued that this would have an effect in minimizing the risk of technology complacency and bias [44].

This would probably require a novel “knowledge of the surface”, i.e., an epistemology reflecting how we cope with “the multiplicity and confusion on the surface of our existence” (cf. Simmel), which has been tentatively investigated so far by a few authors (e.g., F. Nietzsche, S. Kracauer, G. Simmel, W. Benjamin, E. Bloch, M. Maffesoli, M. Vozza).

To draw an analogy with painting, the most suitable term would be “base support”; in philosophy, this concept has been denoted as “world-sheet”, first introduced by Pierce and then speculated by Carlo Sini [48].

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Title: From Care for Design to Becoming Matters: New Perspectives for the Development of Socio-technical Systems
Authors: Federico Cabitza
Angela Locoro
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Book: Digitally Supported Innovation
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-40264-2

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-319-40265-9

Copyright Year: 2016
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40265-9_8

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