https://theusercondition.computer/

agency = ability to evade automatisms

Action is what breaks the “fateful automatism of sheer happening”.

An action is basically a choice, and agency measures the capacity of making choices.

smartphones blurred organizational boundaries of online and offline worlds → spatial metaphors lost favor.

the computer is a metamedium, namely, a medium capable of simulate all other media

the computer should be a medium rather than a vehicle, its function not pre-established (like that of the car or the television) but reformulable by the user (like in the case of paper and clay).

user: (1) they perform repetitive labor, (2) they fabricate things, (3) they act,

but interaction does not only include forms of use, but also forms of non-use, such as withdrawal, disinterest, boycott, resistance, etc

non-user is the one who possesses maximum agency, more than the standard user, the power user, and maybe even more than the hacker.

“mechanically extended men”

Instead of limiting the use of AI to cognitive outsourcing, it would become a tool for cognitive transformation

Software was compartimentalized into apps.

Right now, in the US, a person is more likely to possess a mobile phone than a desktop computer (81% vs 74% in the US according to the Pew Center)

Users’ desires weren’t expressed by them within the computer medium. Instead, they were defined apriori within the controlled setting of interaction design: theoretical user journeys anticipated and construed user activity. In the name of user-friendliness, many learning curves might have been flattened.