Future Living in a Participatory Way

This chapter introduces the concept of critical user participation as a means to see the sociotechnical gap in context aware applications as an opportunity rather then a problem space. It argues that for context aware applications to get integrated in everyday life, the principles of critical user participation as defined in this chapter must be fulfilled. In the first part of the chapter the authors scrutinize the concepts of “context” and “participation” and argue why critical user participation principles should be fulfilled when developing and interacting with context aware applications. The second part consists of an empirical study on the existing vision and context aware applications of the “homes of the future” in Belgium and the Netherlands. In the conclusions a reflection is made upon the opportunities of the socio-technical gap to empower the users of context aware applications. We are responsible for the world in which we live not because it is an arbitrary construction of our choosing, but because it is sedimented out of particular practices that we have a role in shaping. —Karen Barad (1998 p. 102)