ABSTRACT
That such a perspective is needed should come as no surprise to those interested in studies of technology: it has been observed, for example, that the history of technology has tended to focus on invention and innovation rather than on how technologies are actually used (Edgerton 2011). A ‘pro-innovation bias’ is also manifest in the sometimes implicit understanding in much of the literature that innovation is self-evidently good (Sveiby et al. 2012) – an understanding that can, in turn, lead to an insufficient questioning of the need for and the effects on society of given technologies. Once the focus is switched to use, however, the desires and abilities of – and impacts on – human beings come into play and many ‘older’ technologies appear to be longer-lived than previously assumed (Edgerton 2011).
