The instrumentalised user: human, computer, system

Abstract

Humans who encounter social media platforms have a role to play. They are expected to generate content, a demand starkly illustrated by a mid-2010s Facebook prompt: “Write something.” This essay recuperates the history of this role, the “instrumentalised user,” and traces its development from the mid-1960s to the present. Drawing on evidence from scholarly texts in ergonomics, media studies, computer science, psychology, Human-Computer Interaction, and political economy, the essay traces the instrumentalised user’s emergence from decades of efforts to characterise and problematise those actors who encounter computing. Using Actor-Network Theory to show how humans and computing machinery were imagined to work together, the essay reveals that social media’s efforts to extract labour from its users are the heirs to a recurring theme in computer and internet history.

Keywords:

• user
• human-computer interaction
• system
• labour

Acknowledgments

The author thanks Ian Reyes and Justin Wyatt, who provided feedback on an early version of this essay, as well as generous audiences at the University of Rhode Island and the 2019 conference of the Reception Studies Society. Thoughtful critiques from two anonymous reviewers and the patient stewardship of the Internet Histories editorial team were instrumental in refining the arguments here.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 I have chosen “instrumentalised” over “instrumental” to emphasise that this logic is imposed upon human users, rather than being some innate characteristic.

2 As John Durham Peters (2015) notes: “One reads McLuhan for sparks” (p. 17).

3 See the finding aid to the Marshall McLuhan Library Collection, p. 264, available at https://fisher.library.utoronto.ca/sites/fisher.library.utoronto.ca/files/mcluhanFA-june2014.pdf.

4 This idea dates to the late 19th century (Logan, 2019, p. 1).

5 This idea echoes Sheridan and Ferrell’s (1974) efforts to draw an “analogy between the performance of a complex engineering system and that of a human operator” (p. 3). Card et al. (1983) cite Sheridan and Ferrell. Newell had also explored the notion in Siewiorek et al. (1982).

6 Card et al. (1983) do not suggest that training humans is easy, or even that it is the best option for optimizing systems. Their focus is on using knowledge of human cognition to inform interface design (p. 11). Nevertheless: “knowledge in cognitive psychology […] is sufficiently advanced to allow the analysis and improvement of common mental tasks” (p. 91). Even if learning is slow (p. 363), there is a contrast with Llewellyn-Thomas’s position, which understood human capacities as fixed.

7 Two collaborators wrote retrospectively of Newell’s dual fascination with brains and computers: “The strategy of simulating human thinking did not rest on any assumption of similarity between computer architectures and the architecture of the brain beyond the very general assumptions that both were physical symbol systems” (Bell & Siewiorek, 2011, p. 93)

8 Fitting, though, as Latour (2005) preferred “sociology of associations” to “actor-network theory” (p. 9).

9 Hesmondhalgh (2010) complicates this logic, arguing that while social media’s leveraging of user-generated content is appropriative of user labour (and therefore alienating), “complaints about free labour need to be linked to discussion of which kinds of free labour merit payment” (p. 278), especially if users derive some other benefit besides payment. It is possible that user and audience relationships to the “free lunch” are not dissimilar, but that the thing that induces extra attention in social media is precisely the pleasure of participation.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Scott Kushner

Scott Kushner is Assistant Professor of Communication Studies in the University of Rhode Island’s Harrington School of Communication and Media. This article is part of a larger project on the theory and history of lurking in networked computing environments. Kushner's other projects include a cultural history of the event ticket and work on the cultures of listening to popular music. His essays have appeared in venues including New Media & Society, Space and Culture, Convergence, and First Monday.