This episode of Theorizing the Web Presents explores the precarious relationship between human agency and networked technologies in our contemporary age. In the first part, titled “ABOLISH THE USER: Designing Against the End of History,” Melanie Bumpas examines how the ubiquitous design construct of “the user” constrains our experience of the web and forecloses the possibility of new kinds of online sociality. Then, in “Web Theory in a Warming World,” Adam Boffa considers how climate change has various implications for the future of digital media.
The discussion is moderated by Dr. Tanya Lokot, Assistant Professor at the School of Communications, Dublin City University, whose writing focuses on the interplay between digital media and civic actors in the context of augmented protest.