theguardian.com Ah, this is just down my alley regarding technology non-use, luddism and related perspectives: This article tells the stories of people who consciously resist new technology in favour of older versions. The reasons are manifold, but a lot of it has to do with ownership, control, or nostalgia […]
#nonuse (1/2)
The non-use of digital technology – with all its forms, motivations and consequences – has been one of my key research interests for well over a decade. I am particularly fascinated as I increasingly encounter a tight-woven overlap with #a11y and #privacy.
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Punkt. MP02 Pigeon
punkt.ch 
The Punkt MP02 is marketed as a “voicephone” – a 4G mobile device that is stripped down to the very bare functionalities of voice, text and serving as a hotspot for a tablet or PC. It’s not just a cool example of a very minimalist product for people mindful of their relation to […]
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The Optional Chaining Operator, 'Modern' Browsers, and My Mom
blog.jim-nielsen.com 
These are the kind of stories that would deserve so much more space in education and practice of technologists:
The real-life impact of our technical decisions really hit home to me once again: my Mom had trouble volunteering and participating in her local community because somebody […]
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Why your website should work without Javascript
endtimes.dev 
For some reason, the myth that users without JavaScript don't exist, refuses to die. So thank you to the author of this comprehensive collection of both statistics (1% of millions is still a lot of people!) and – more importantly – all the other reasons that may, even temporarily, turn web users into "users with no JavaScript". -
Folk Interfaces
maggieappleton.com 
“Folk Interfaces” by Maggie Appleton is a fascinating summary of an aspect of design that is actually somewhat related to my interest in “non-use” as a gradient: the “other-use”, so to say…
Folk interfaces are when users reappropriate existing […]
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Another Finnish language bookmark, but it’s so important a topic that it deserves to be shared beyond the language border: Public broadcaster YLE shares the story of a Finnish citizen moving back to Finland from abroad. Not having access to an online bank account (as 450.000 other people […]
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In Finland, it turns out, there is a movement of volunteers ("Kyläradio", i.e. "village radio") who establish a radio network to be used in disaster or blackout situations.
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Bye, bye algorithm axbom.com
Here's a comprehensive take on not using algorithmic social media that illustrates how technology non-use is far from Luddism or the lack of technical skills it is often trivialized to. -
This story starts with a story of conscious technology non-use: an average American, so upset by the opaque tracking of his everyday life, that he decides to pull the plug in an act of self-defence:
Crum, a charming individual who shares his opinions freely, isn’t […]
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Championing Inclusive Research Through User Stories
answerlab.com 
When people ask me what I do as a UX researcher my answer is usually along the lines of “I watch people struggle with technology without judging them.” And I’ve watched hundreds of people struggle with technology.
In an article that neatly brings together UX […] -
Reflecting about adopting more technology lawriephipps.co.uk
Starting with an analogy to tech in orienteering sports, Lawrie Phipps looks at the excluding factor of the growing reliance of a certain stack of technology:
[…] practices in education have shifted, and we now have more technology as a default. That technology will have a […]
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Olu Niyiawosusi looks at digital access(ibility) from a broader inclusion perspective; through questions of non-use and the digital divide.
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the new digital divide on college campuses scatter.wordpress.com
This article – on a blog with the fascinating title of “the unruly darlings of public sociology” – refers to a recent study that highlights how inequality can hide under a layer of apparent similarity:
In a survey of college students at a large, midwestern university, we find near-universal ownership of cell phones and laptops. That said, we also find big gaps in the quality and reliability of the technology students own.
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Collective aspects of privacy in the Twitter social network epjdatascience.springeropen.com
This paper tickles my brain not just in the privacy domain, but neatly ties it into my interest in technology non-use. The researchers test the so-called shadow profile hypothesis: “the data shared by the users of an online service predicts personal information of non-users of the […]
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Life Without the Tech Giants gizmodo.com
Addressing the widespread concern with the big tech giants taking too much control over people’s lives, Kashmir Hill enrolls in a self-experiment:
The common retort to these concerns is that you should “just stop using their services.” So I decided to try.
What […] -
The Tyranny of Convenience nytimes.com
This NYT op-ed by Tim Wu speaks to me in so many ways. It links my fascination for research on technology non-use with what I call a "constructively critical approach" to interaction design, and justifies all the countless days invested in debates on the Indieweb, on discussions about decentralisation and empowerment, on considering alternatives to mainstream solutions and working to promote the value of design ethics. -
Reading why techies stop to use technology they themselves have created highlights how a lack in consideration of the long-term impact of technological advancements can damage not just products and brands, but potentially society at large.
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The Future is (not) a Problem furtherfield.org
Niall Docherty and Dave Young look at the “crises” of our technological era as described and “solved” by the big tech giants of today and present their critical call for understanding these design fictions as what they are: narratives that aim to establish new markets for […]
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For the Moment reallifemag.com
Largely building upon queer theory and its understanding of temporality, “For the moment” by Benjamin Haber elaborates on yet another aspect of human life that the digital economy believes to be able to solve by introducing a simple binary. As it is being understood that the default of […]
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A day without Javascript sonniesedge.co.uk
It must have been in 2006, in my first full-time web-related job back at Satama Interactive that I was not only introduced to, but I myself actively promoted (in our then state-of-the-art web standards advocacy group, together with Harri Kilpiö and others) that any website should work without […]
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Two fresh data sets from Pew Research Center, highlighting realities I would love to see considered more often in design teams and boardrooms alike: “Not everyone in advanced economies is using social media”, and “Smartphones are common in advanced economies, but digital […]
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Recent writings about the consequences of the AWS outage on centralised services make me believe that an “Offline First” mindset can help improve the worth and use experience of digital artefacts. (Screenshots from the Mashable article quoted below and offlinefirst.org) Allow […]
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Opportunity for All? Technology and Learning in Lower-Income Families joanganzcooneycenter.org
Recent research on digital media use points to two important gaps in educational opportunity for low-income families with young children. First, there is an access gap. Second, there is what scholars refer to as a participation gap, in which digital resources are not well guided or supported to ensure educational progress.
This research report by Victoria Rideout and Vikki Katz (PDF) contains some interesting, mostly quantitative, findings not just about the challenges, but also about real-life practices of digital device use in lower-income families in the USA. […] -
Inadvertent Algorithmic Cruelty meyerweb.com
A spot-on example of scenarios not taken into account in design inadvertently turning something intended to be “joyful” into something “awful”: Eric Meyer really did not want to be reminded of his past year, but still faced Facebook pushing his terrible year's content […]
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The short film “Follow Me on Dead Media - Analog Authenticities in Alternative Skateboarding Scene” by Joonas Rokka, Pekka Rousi and Vessi Hämäläinen presents their research on an alternative skateboarding scene in Helsinki. It is a so-called videography - academic […]
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