Q + A With Beth Kolko on Creativity and Consumerism in the Digital Age

Berkman Fellow Beth Kolko will be our guest tomorrow at the Tuesday Luncheon Series, where she will speak on "User, Hacker, Builder, Thief: Creativity and Consumerism in a Digital Age." As a primer to her luncheon talk, Berkman intern Yvette Wohn sat down with Beth, where they discussed the hacking worldview, technology in emerging markets, and user centered design.

Q. What is your definition of a hacker?

I'm not sure I want to choose just one definition. But let's try this: if I'm a hacker, I'm thoughtful about how I negotiate the world, I think about how I can make use of objects and systems rather than allowing the object or system to make use of me by slotting me into a pre-arranged role. It's worth mentioning that my work for the past several years has been focused on traveling to emerging markets (some people use the term developing world) and looking at technology usage patterns there. That work has surfaced all kinds of hacks that people come up with to make a cell phone useful or a computer game playable in a context that has markedly different infrastructure  -- financial, linguistic, economic -- than that assumed by the designers of the devices. So the hackers I talk about aren't just the kids in the latest Die Hard movie. It's more about how people make stuff work in ways that suit *their* needs.

Q. When you say that we should encourage users to become hackers, builders, and thieves to boost creative and diverse design, how broad are you thinking of the term "design"?

There was an exhibit at the Vancouver Art Gallery a few years ago called Massive Change. The tagline for the exhibit was "It's not about the world of design. It's about the design of the world." That exhibit in turn influenced a class I taught called Engineering and Society, and  the exhibit and class together started my project on design as defined broadly and all the visible and invisible ways in which the design of objects and systems construct our everyday experiences.

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Q. Should hacking be encouraged in areas other than design?

I think hacking should be encouraged across domains, but how one defines hacking is especially key. There are all kinds of assumptions people make about hackers as individuals and as a community, as well as what kind of actions constitute hacking. The creativity for which I advocate has nothing to do with botnets or Internet worms. Rather, hacking is a worldview, a perspective that sees products and institutions and systems as part of a conversation about human activity rather than a set of directives about how we are supposed to behave as consumers or citizens. In many ways, hacking embodies the notion of agency and resistance. 

Q. What role does "stealing" of technology have in this age?

There are many people much better qualified than I to talk about what constitutes theft of property in its digital form when making copies doesn't imperil the integrity of the original or the ability of the owner to make use of or profit from the original. But from the perspective of both social convention as well legality there are changing notions of ownership and, consequently, theft. I think the increasing move to construct purchasers as licensees rather than owners of objects puts people in the position of engaging in all sorts of activities that suddenly could be constructed as theft when, as per social convention, those same activities have previously been accepted as just the kind of thing that one does with the stuff one owns. I think the shifting definition of what constitutes stealing is one of those stealth dangers that isn't getting enough attention.

Q. Do you think companies should be more interactive with consumers in deciding what kind of products they design?

 There are several design philosophies that involve future consumers in the design process. User centered design is one of the most commonly used, but there are also people who focus on participatory design, value sensitive design, and even learner centered design. I prefer to think of design as not just contained to the world of commercial products, though. Langdon Winner, for example, had some great examples of how design of roads and overpasses constructed people's literal ability to move from point A to point B. In some ways the significance of the issues someone like Winner raises is tied to how I'd like to see the conversation about technological artifacts change. I am less interested in the user interface of my Ipod than I am in making sure the conversation about design includes a recognition that people use the most mundane of devices for the most profound of purposes.

Q. Do you think companies will think it fair to be hacked when they've spent millions of dollars in R&D?

That depends on what kind of hacking we're discussing. The hacking that I emphasize is actually a very engaged, creative, and thoroughly non-competitive practice. Hackers don't want to learn how stuff works so they can route around profit making centers for companies. They hack into stuff so they can learn about it and improve it for their own use -- or, believe it or not, they often do it just for fun. They're not creating startups based on what they learn from hacking. They're making things work better in the context of their lives. But because tweaking hardware is increasingly constructed as a forbidden activity, the joy of discovery in learning how things work -- simply choosing not to be a passive consumer -- pushes one closer to the line of legality.