Designing Culture: A Work of the Technological Imagination

To stimulate a discussion about the many ways in which
culture influences the practices of technology design, I
present examples of technologies and digital applications whose
designs were explicitly informed by cultural theory. In 1999,
a research group at Xerox PARC built an interactive museum
exhibit called "XFR: Experiments in the Future of Reading."
The resulting exhibit explored different facets of the nature of
reading in a digital culture. In describing those moments when
cultural theory, values, and conventions become an explicit
part of the design process, I reflect on the 'technological
imagination' at work, and how the exercise of this imagination,
in turn, results in the development of new literacies, modes of
expression, as well as devices and digital artifacts.