A description of Technicity

Whilst reading this morning I found what is probably the most straightforward and easy to understand explanation of Technicity. It is a heavily used, but highly disputed term amongst DCRC researchers.

The power of code to transform everyday life is not simply a function of extent or pervasiveness or visibility, but primarily of effect. Technicity refers to the extent to which technologies mediate, supplement, and augment collective life; the extent to which technologies are fundamental to the constitution and grounding of human endeavor; and the unfolding or evolutive power of technologies to make things happen in conjunction with people (Mackenzie 2002). For an individual technical element such as a saw, its technicity might be its hardness and flexibility (a product of human knowledge and production skills) that enables it, in conjunction with human mediation, to cut well (note that the constitution and use of the saw is dependent on both human and technology; they are inseparable). As Star and Ruhleder (1996, 112; our emphasis) note, ‘‘[A] tool is not just a thing with pre-given attributes frozen in time — but a thing becomes a tool in practice, for someone, when connected to some particular activity . . . The tool emerges in situ.’’ ‘‘In large-scale ensembles, such as an automobile engine consisting of many components, technicity is complex and cannot be isolated from the sum of individual components (and their design, manufacture, and assembly), its ‘‘associated milieu’’ (e.g., flow of air, lubricants, fuel), and its human operator(s), that ‘‘conditions and is conditioned by the working of the engine’’ (Mackenzie 2002, 12).

Dodge, M. & Kitchin, R. (2005) ‘Code and the transduction of space.’ Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 95, 162-180.

Their work is great and I’ve got a lot of respect going back to the mapping cyberspace project. Looking forward to their capstone book in this code/space project.