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Rated How Artifacts Afford: The Power and Politics of Everyday Things 10/10

Affordances are frequently mentioned in the design and STS literatures. There is no consensus about the content of this term, even though there are multiple attempts to theorise it. The author proposes shifting the focus from "what are the affordances?" to how artefacts afford and under what circumstances, and examines approaches for implementing this vision.<br/><br/>The author attempts to make sense of the current mess, providing a coherent account that attends to the political and social contexts in which technologies operate. In addition, the text presents useful techniques for deploying the concept. Curiously, this successful approach shows the limits of "affordance" as a concept: it allows us to understand modes of interaction with technological artefacts, but even a formulation as elegant as the one presented in this book is still centred on individual artefacts (such as apps, devices, or even platforms). As such, recent attempts to take affordances beyond their use case as a design tool seem misguided. This, of course, is not a problem with the book, which does an excellent job of showing how affordances can be a powerful tool for critical design and engagement with designed artefacts.<br/>

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Published 2026-08-19 08:12 UTC · bridged from Atmosphere