“Boundaries Do Not Sit Still” from Interaction to Agential Intra-action in HCI

Abstract

We live in a world that is increasingly shaped through computational technology. The expansion and pervasiveness of computing brings along opportunities and challenges for the field of HCI. New application domains evolve and technological advances pose novel interaction possibilities. But with computing’s shaping power comes also the need for increased responsibility and attention to the societal, political and ecological impact of technology. In this conceptual paper, new materialist thinking is employed to locate these societal etc. aspects as inextricably enmeshed within computing research and development. New materialism is a multi-vocal, cross-disciplinary field of doing-thinking. In contrast to Western dichotomic tradition, a monistic, post-anthropocentric perspective is provided and matter as an active agent in world-making is acknowledged. Central to this paper is the questioning of the human and computer dichotomy at the core of the field of HCI. For this, a material-semiotic perspective on human-computer interaction is elaborated upon. Furthermore, the paradigm of interaction is revisited and reworked as a conception of agential intra-action, a term coined by physicist Karen Barad. From this interrogation of dichotomies and the notion of intra-action follow further conceptual shifts that are discussed as productive for the future of HCI, namely responsibility as specification of ethical agency and performativity in contrast to representationalism.