Distilled down, the Critical Interpretive Sociotechnical Framework recognizes that all technical artifacts, including their production and distribution mechanisms, policy-of-use, support, and end-of-life expectations and procedures, are comprised of a physical component, a software component, a human component, and a social component. Further, as Fischer and Herrmann point out, while the technical layers are “produced and continuously adapted to provide a reliable, anticipatable relationship between user input and the system’s output”, the social layers “cannot be planned and controlled with respect to the final outcome … They can only—if ever—be understood afterwards and not in advance.” In addition, Wajcman (2009, “Feminist theories of technology”. Cambridge Journal Of Economics, 34(1), 143-152. doi:10.1093/cje/ben057) among others notes how the social and technical are mutually shaping, such that our social frames shape the formation of the technical layers, which in turn shape the social layers. As such, without a critical lens that questions the historical context and existing power relationships, technical artifacts can intentionally and unintentionally come to reinforce exploitation, marginalization, and cultural imperialism. As an icebreaker for some demystifying workshops, we will ask people as they enter to draw a picture of an innovator innovating. We will then ask everyone to introduce themselves, to describe a way they’ve taken something they have and used it in a way it wasn’t meant to be used to solve a problem, and then to describe their picture. While everyone gives an example of a way they’ve innovatively used stuff they have, virtually everyone draws a picture of a white male working alone in a lab as a representative of an innovator. Our understanding of technology and innovation has been shaped to consider only certain forms of technology and innovation, and primarily that done by one segment of the population. A critical interpretive sociotechnical framework encourages people to more broadly and critically define technology, advance their own expertise and influence over technology, and critically consider the ways they are shaped by technology when primary power over technology is ceded to one segment of the population.
For more on this essential foundation to our approach, see Wolske & Rhinesmith, 2015 and Rhinesmith & Wolske, 2014.
