From desktop computers to laptops to digital assistants, not to mention bank teller machines, microwave ovens, cellular telephones, and ticket machines, we encounter computers in all aspects of everyday life. The ever-expanding province of computation is a commonplace, the topic of a million coffeeshop conversations, television reports, and newspaper headlines. We talk about how fast it is changing, but we talk much less about the ways in which it is not. Many things about computers are not changing at all. Our basic idea of what a computer does, what it does, and how it does it, for instance, have hardly changed for decades. Nor have the difficulties we encounter actually using computers.
Dourish, P. (2004). Where the action is. The MIT press.
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