From agency and subjectivity to animism: Phenomenological and science technology studies (STS) approach to design of large techno-social systems

Abstract

The social, ecological and technological challenges, starting on the scale of a small-scale city block to the megapolises and further, force us to rethink the user agency in design. What is needed is a Copernican Revolution that will question the centrality of the user and the human and offer a more balanced model for interaction between different agencies, that is more sensitive to the issues of sustainability, co-dependence and symbiosis which we face within such complex and hybrid systems. One way to go is to rethink the early phenomenological concepts of a subject that is more tightly connected and even defined by its environment (Lifeworld, Dasein). Another approach is to thematise the possibilities and limits of non-human agency and define design in terms of creating new networks and assemblages as described by science technology studies (STS) and post-humanist philosophy. © 2010 Taylor & Francis.