Ian Hutchby on affordances and the text metaphor

Really interesting extracts from Hutchby on affordances and the text metaphor:

Grint and Woolgar (1997) suggest the intriguing notion that technologies

should be treated as ‘texts’which are ‘written’ (i.e. configured) in certain ways by their developers, producers and marketers, and have to be ‘read’ (i.e. interpreted) by their users or consumers. The writers of these technology-texts may seek to impose particular meanings on the artefact, and to constrain the range of possible

interpretations open to users.Users, by contrast,may seek to produce readings of the technology-text which best suit the purposes they have in mind for the artefact. It is in the dynamic between these processes that sociologists can begin to locate the

meaningful social reality of technologies. Neither the writing nor the reading of technology-texts is determinate: both are open, negotiated processes. Although there may be ways that technology-texts have ‘preferred’ readings built into them, it is always open to the user to find a way around this attempt at interpretive closure. A good example is the telephone. As Frissen (1995) points out, one of the early ways that the telephone was marketed to a mass audience (‘written’, in Grint and Woolgar’s terms) was as an instrumental tool useful for business negotiations (for men) and the management of household services (for women).However, women in particular began to ‘read’ this technology in quite a different way – as a tool for sociability, for chatting – and after a while the manufacturers, sensitive to this new reading, began to market what was to all intents a ‘different’ technology to the one they had begun with. (Hutchby 201: 445)

... different technologies possess different affordances, and these affordances constrain the ways that they can possibly be ‘written’ or ‘read’. (Hutchby 201: 447)

... the range of possibilities for interpretation and action is nowhere near as open for either ‘writers’ or ‘readers’ as the technology as text metaphor implies. (Hutchby 201: 450)

My aim has been to argue for an acceptance that our interpretations and uses

of technological artefacts, while important, contingent and variable, are constrained

in analysable ways by the ranges of affordances that particular artefacts possess. The

social constructivist consensus has usefully brought to the forefront the recognition

that social processes are involved in all aspects of technology, and not simply in its

effects upon society. But we can become too fixated on the social shaping of technology at the expense of an equally pressing, though differently framed, concern with the technological shaping of social action. (Hutchby 201: 453)

The affordances of an artefact are not things which impose themselves upon humans’ actions with, around, or via that artefact.But they do set limits on what it is possible to do with, around, or via the artefact. By the same token, there is not one but a variety of ways of responding to the range of affordances for action and interaction that a technology presents.We can analyse the development of those responses empirically, but in order to do so we have to accept that technological artefacts do not amount simply to what their users make of them; what is made of them is accomplished in the interface between human aims and the artefact’s affordances.(Hutchby 201: 453)

Defining affordances

Lucas Graves has an interesting article on blogging, although blogging is really just the example or case study, as the article is really about the concept of 'affordances'.

He cites the work of both Ian Hutchby (2001) and Brian Rappert (2003) whose concept of affordances attempt to construct a middle ground between technological determinism and social constructivism. 

For Hutchby, “[d]ifferent technologies possess different affordances, and these affordances constrain the ways they can possibly be ‘written’ or ‘read’ ” (Hutchby 2001: 447). Rappert takes a similar view that affordances are the perceived properties inherent in an object that suggest - but do not determine- its uses. Rappert views technology as both “configured by and configuring, affected by and affecting” (p. 569) social practices. He argues that “[w]hile objects do exist, the way in which we understand them is always subject to negotiation and interpretation” (p. 571). 

Graves argues that the technology of blogging didn't just come along and change people's practices; rather, blogging technologies were designed to "facilitate an activity that was already beginning to take place, in the same way that the development of the telephone and telephone networks conformed to the emerging practices of telephone culture." (Graves 2007: 243). He writes of the transformation of blogs as simple web pages to the sort of software we recognise now which automatically arranges posts in reverse order. He goes on to argue that blogging, as a distinct genre, emerged at the "intersection of technology and society: Technology and sociocultural practice evolve together, each feeding back into the other" (Graves 2007: 343).

Affordances: Quick definitions

"I will argue that affordances are functional and relational aspects which frame, while not determining, the possibilities for agentic action in relation to an object. In this way, technologies can be understood as artefacts which may be both shaped by and shaping of the practices humans use in interaction with, around and through them. This ‘third way’ between the (constructivist) emphasis on the shaping power of human agency and the (realist) emphasis on the constraining power of technical capacities opens the way for new analyses of how technological artefacts become important elements in the patterns of ordinary human conduct. (Hutchby 2001: 444)

“the affordances of the artifact: the possibilities for action that it offers” (Hutchby 2001: 449)

"the features of a technology that make a certain action possible" (Graves 2007 :332). 

References

Graves, L. (2007). The Affordances of Blogging: A Case Study in Culture and Technological Effects. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 31(4), 331-346

Hutchby, I. (2001). Technologies, texts and affordances. Sociology: The Journal of the British

Sociological Association, 35(2), 441-456.

Rappert, B. (2003). Technologies, texts and possibilities: A reply to Hutchby. Sociology: The Journal of the British Sociological Association, 37(3), 565-580.