wired.com 
How will these smaller groups of happier people be monetized? This is a tough question for the billionaires. Happy people, the kind who eat sandwiches together, are boring. They don’t buy much. Their smartphones are six versions behind and have badly cracked screens. They fix […]
#nonuse (1/3)
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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Splitting the Web
ploum.net 
While I greatly appreciate the way Lionel Dricot describes the split between the “commercial, monopolies-riddled, media-adored web”, driven by bloat and monetization, and the “tech-savvy web”, as a way to describe the more consicous creation and consumption of digital media […]
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I’m a Luddite (and So Can You!)
thenib.com 
The Luddite movement (named after their fictional leader “Ned Ludd”) often pops up in the context of discussions about intentional technology non-use. Just as with the Amish, the Luddites are often misrepresented as outright anti-technology, though the true history of the movement and […]
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Internet cafes introduced Uganda to the internet
restofworld.org 
A collection of journalistic stories, this article and the ones on the same topic presented on the same page below, presents **a rich ethnography on the rise, fall, and future of internet cafes** in Uganda, Nepal, Nigeria, Mexico, Argentina, and Hong Kong. -
In June, I remotely attended the PhD defence of Emīlija Veselova at the Aalto University Department of Design, where she presented her research about nature as a stakeholder in design processes, more specifically the “more-than-human design approach”. The topic fascinates me, both from […]
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The core thesis of this article is that young people have started to move away from the big social media, withdrawing into more private spaces for their digital social interactions. It’s a handy categorization of non- (or not-yet-?) mainstream practices by which individuals and communities […]
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The Performance Inequality Gap
infrequently.org 
This concept of a “Performance Inequality Gap” brings together so many of my perspectives – from #a11y to #nonuse to inequality as one of the main concerns of the sociologist:
As long as we continue to build only for wealthy users, the dream of a web for everyone will […]
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The Luddite Club is a high school group in Brooklyn promoting “a lifestyle of self-liberation from social media and technology”. This NYT article introduces these self-described teenage misfits who choose to engage critically with media (all the way to only using old-school flip phones) […]
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The Dangers of Elite Projection
humantransit.org 
Jarrett Walker describes “Elite projection” as “the belief, among relatively fortunate and influential people, that what those people find convenient or attractive is good for the society as a whole”. Walker talks about this concept from an urban planning perspective, yet […]
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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 […]
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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.
aalto.fi 
hbr.org 
nytimes.com 
theguardian.com 
yle.fi 
yle.fi 
cnet.com 
