On How Technologies Participate in the World They Represent

When we think about our interactions through technology, we might focus on the information that is represented through the technological medium. Consider patient record cards used in a hospital to communicate between staff, an example Dourish uses in his book (p.20). Here, we might focus on the way the card represents information about the patient, their condition, and their treatments. From this perspective, we might suggest replacing the paper cards with electronic records that present the same information more efficiently.

However, as Dourish explains, such a transformation is shown to be rarely successful. It happens that the cards themselves carry important information by virtue of the way they are embedded in the practice of the medical staff.

For example, handwriting on the forms reveals who performed different parts of the treatment; wear and tear on the form indicates heavy use; and the use of pencil marks rather than pen informally indicates tentative information… One relevance of embodiment for interaction with computational systems is that, for many tasks, it is relevant to consider how computation participates in the world it represents. Computation is fundamentally a representational medium, but as we attempt to expand the ways in which we interact with computation, we need to pay attention to the duality of representation and participation. (p.20)

For Dourish, the understanding applies just as equally to technological artifacts. While they may not participate physically in the world, they nonetheless are embedded in the situated practices of a particular community.

The meaning of the information is not simply what the system conveys, but how it fits into a wider pattern of practice. The medium is not simply the representation that is conveyed, but how that representations becomes active in practice. (p.165)