“Borderline Issues: Social and Material Aspects of Design” In Defense of Demassification: Empowering Individuals

Brown and Duguid raise many interesting issues in their paper, decorated with fancy expressions and examples chosen from somewhat arbitrary domains. They state a number of important global observations — to name a few: (1) designers can prompt and support change in a community of practice, but they cannot predetermine it, (2) design and use mutually shape one another in iterative, social processes, and (3) social problems arising from power relations cannot be resolved by technology alone. I agree with all these statements, but the critical question is: what do these observations mean and imply for designers and users in their work, for their social consciousness, for their personal involvement, and for their interactions with clients and users? In this commentary, I will focus on the issue surrounding “demassification ” as discussed in section 3.2 of the paper. Brown and Duguid articulate valid concerns and arguments about the potentially undesirable consequences of demassification. I would like to defend demassification as an important challenge in our age of uniformity (of fast-food restaurants, hotel chains, global TV-networks, and increasingly uniform software environments). The important issue is no