Hyperconnectivity by Carré Dominique; Vidal Geneviève; & Geneviève Vidal

Author:Carré, Dominique; Vidal, Geneviève; & Geneviève Vidal
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated
Published: 2018-09-28T00:00:00+00:00

4.2. Negotiated renunciation

This commitment, between empirical and conceptual approaches for a critical posture, supports the analysis of uses, being the object of a renunciation by users of some of their freedoms in order to seize technologies and digital services with which they negotiate. They are indeed authors, through their resistance, bypassing, or even misappropriation, using digital features, via their skills and experiences, and deploying a critical posture thanks to the meanings of uses. Negotiated renunciation thus also takes into account the prescription of interactive technologies disseminated in society and the misconduct28 of users (most often) aware of their renunciation in the domestic sphere, at work, during their communicational, cultural and mobility practice.

The freedom to act in a hyperconnected society should thus not be denied, even if technologies are increasingly at the service of the economy on the lookout for their uses. Hence, the concept of negotiated renunciation makes it possible to grasp the ambivalence of digital uses and proves to be relevant when considering the dialectics of the compliance of user-subjects with the technical system29 and social appropriation.

This concept also helps to put the notions of use and interactivity into perspective. It is often about power without discussion from the moment when users seize technologies, as actors of digital devices. Thus, far from being linear and tidy, the appropriation process of interactive and interconnected technologies is changing. In other words, the situations of use multiply and renew themselves, interweave, differ from or elude more or less to the designers’ logic, making it impossible to predict all the uses of technological devices30. This complex dynamic probably explains why users encountered during the field studies feel like they negotiate31 with the designers thanks to their devices, caught in a “chaotic process” due to negotiations, in terms of resistance and opposition, or even protest, with established conventions and to limit their monitoring.

“Negotiated renunciation”, resulting from a work to conceptualize more than 10 years of field studies, simultaneously takes into account the injunction of digital technologies disseminated in society and user misconduct, aware of their submission32 to DICT in the domestic sphere, at work and in mobility. This concept takes into consideration two forces that seem to oppose each other: to be acted on and to be an actor. Indeed, empowerment through digital and reticular technologies updates the issue of prescription, understood as imposing knowledge and skills on individuals, which would allow them to empower themselves. This prescription is intimately linked to mediation policies, since it involves giving standardized answers to individual requests. The prescription is of a deeply contractual nature, inasmuch as the individual must agree to give up some of his/her liberties if he/she wants to acquire new ones. When this renunciation is repeated enough times, especially in the context of technical processes, relations of domination are established between technical systems, driven by the economic sphere and now increasingly by the administrative sphere with digital teleservices, and individual users, or even associations or collectives. This case is a prescription translated within informational, communicational and transactional devices, which are part of the hyperconnection context.

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